Work with GitHub

    • Add new files to the repository.
    • existing files.
    • Review the added or modified files.

    The contribution guides assume you can complete the following tasks:

    • Fork the .
    • Create a branch for your changes.
    • Add commits to that branch.
    • Open a PR to share your contribution.

    To contribute to the Istio documentation, you need to:

    1. Create a .

    2. Sign the Contributor License Agreement.

    3. Install on your authoring system to preview and test your changes.

    The Istio documentation is published under the Apache 2.0 license.

    1. Add to the beginning of the URL. For example, to edit https://istio.io/about, the new URL should be https://preliminary.istio.io/about
    2. Click the pencil icon in the lower right corner.
    3. Perform your edits on the GitHub UI.
    4. Submit a Pull Request with your changes.

    Please see our guides on how to contribute new content or to learn more about submitting more substantial changes.

    Active content development takes place using the master branch of the istio/istio.io repository. On the day of an Istio release, we create a release branch of master for that release. The following button takes you to the repository on GitHub:

    The Istio documentation repository uses multiple branches to publish documentation for all Istio releases. Each Istio release has a corresponding documentation branch. For example, there are branches called , release-1.1, release-1.2 and so forth. These branches were created on the day of the corresponding release. To view the documentation for a specific release, see the archive page.

    This branching strategy allows us to provide the following Istio online resources:

    • The shows the content from the current release branch.

    • The archive site shows the content from all prior release branches.

    Given how branching works, if you submit a change into the master branch, that change won’t appear on until the next major Istio release happens. If your documentation change is relevant to the current Istio release, then it’s probably worth also applying your change to the current release branch. You can do this easily and automatically by using the special cherry-pick labels on your documentation PR. For example, if you introduce a correction in a PR to the master branch, you can apply the cherrypick/release-1.4 label in order to merge this change to the release-1.4 branch.

    When your initial PR is merged, automation creates a new PR in the release branch which includes your changes. You may need to add a comment to the PR that reads @googlebot I consent in order to satisfy the bot that we use.

    On rare occasions, automatic cherry picks don’t work. When that happens, the automation leaves a note in the original PR indicating it failed. When that happens, you must manually create the cherry pick and deal with the merge issues that prevented the process from working automatically.

    Note that we only ever cherry pick changes into the current release branch, and never to older branches. Older branches are considered to be archived and generally no longer receive any changes.

    Depending on your contributions and responsibilities, there are several roles you can assume.

    Visit our community page to learn more about the Istio community in general.