Create org-modified unified contributing guide and related coding standards

[pombredanne]

Description

We have many places for this like in:

• https://scancodeio.readthedocs.io/en/latest/contributing.html
• See https://github.com/search?q=org%3Aaboutcode-org+contributing+language%3AreStructuredText&type=code&l=reStructuredText

We need to have a single org-wide document that unifies all these practices with a single set of documentation.

Some other recommendations to add:

• small, focused PRs
• adopting existing code style in a repo
• avoiding the introduction of new dependencies unless absolutely needed

The goal is to start with python-inspector as a base repo to refine this.

Also to consider is how to update tools used across repos for this, like black vs. ruff and use the skeleton for this or scripts.

[mjherzog]

see also #148

[vaibhav11123]

Hey @pombredanne , @JonoYang , @TG1999 , @mjherzog I’ve put together a first draft of the unified contributing guide based on the points discussed here and the patterns across scancode.io / python-inspector / vulnerablecode etc.

Here’s the draft:
(https://docs.google.com/document/d/12hozVcqZNYeHiXSfGdeLbr5GBJOQeZJBkJCamqnCfSA/edit?usp=sharing)

It basically pulls everything into one place (DCO, pre-commit setup, Ruff, branch naming, dependency rules, PR checklist, etc.) and tries to standardize the flow across repos so we don’t have conflicting docs/tooling anymore.

Would love feedback on:
• anything I should remove/simplify
• anything missing from the current org practices
• whether this structure makes sense before I open the PR

Happy to revise based on whatever direction you prefer.

Drafting Unified Contribution Guide.pdf

[mjherzog]

@pombredanne @AyanSinhaMahapatra We also need a standard for project-specific information that is currently in some CONTRIBUTING.rst files. A key example is https://github.com/aboutcode-org/scancode-toolkit/blob/develop/CONTRIBUTING.rst which provides details for how to install and configure the toolkit for development. These instructions should probably be separate - perhaps in a new README-dev.rst file that can be referenced from CONTRIBUTING.rst generically: "Please see README-dev.rst for details about how to set up a development environment to work on a project".