how to contribute to the project

Author: MichaelMraka

CONTRIBUTING.md

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+### How to Contribute
+
+1. **Fork** the repository.
+2. Clone your fork locally.
+3. Make your changes in a new branch.
+4. **Test** your changes thoroughly.
+5. Open a **pull request** with a clear description of your changes.
+
+### Guidelines
+
+- Please follow the coding style guidelines.
+- Ensure that all tests pass before submitting a pull request.
+- Add test for new functionality
+
+### Commits & messages
+
+- Do not use semantic commit messages (chore, fix, feat, ...)
+- Reference Jira task at the beginning of message: e.g. `RHINENG-21424: handle null/notnull filters`
+- Break one big commit into multiple small commits (one per logical change)
+- Put non-functional changes (e.g. refactor to extract a helper) into separate commits (or PRs)
+- Write clear commit messages, a bit of "what" and a lot of "why"
+- Don't squash commits
+
+### Github PRs
+
+- Multiple small PRs are better than one big PR
+- Multiple commits are easier to review than one big commit
+- PRs are rebased not merged - it's easier to follow a single stream of changes
+- Merged PRs are automaticallu tagged with new version