opensafely / opensafely/documentation

Suggestion: add advice about code development whilst a job is running on the server

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new content
Dominant language
Python
Stars
48
Forks
10
Avg merge
2d 19h
Merged PRs (30d)
17

Description

You have helpful advice on the Code reviews and git workflow pages but I feel on either the Job server page or at the bottom of the Getting Started guide it would be helpful to include some advice about developing additional code once you have set a job running on the server and you're waiting for it to finish and hence waiting for the outputs to be released.

I assume that the advice would be to develop the new code on a new branch (because then you can obtain code review on a resulting PR). And I would assume it's preferable to wait before merging this new branch into master/main until the outputs from the job have first been merged (although perhaps this merge order isn't critical if it wouldn't create any merge conflicts or if you're leaving the outputs on the released-candidates branch).

Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

Research direction

Read the Job server and Getting Started pages alongside the existing Code reviews and git workflow guidance. Decide where the advice belongs and resolve the proposed branch and merge-order guidance; done means the published documentation explains how to continue development while a server job and output release are pending.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Domain
documentation
Issue type
Documentation
Difficulty
2/5
Estimated time
1-3 hours
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Mostly clear
Newbie friendliness
35/100

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