Add a development practices page (#849)

Heavily borrowed from https://gdal.org/development/dev_practices.html

en/development/dev_practices.txt

@@ -0,0 +1,125 @@
+.. _development_practices:
+
+================================================================================
+Development practices
+================================================================================
+
+Making changes to MapServer
+---------------------------
+
+Minor changes to MapServer, such as bug fixes, may be made by opening a GitHub pull request.
+
+Major changes should be discussed on the mapserver-dev listserv and may require the drafting
+of a RFC (request for comment) document.
+
+Git usage
+---------
+
+This section collects a few best practices for git usage for MapServer development.
+
+Initiating your work repository
+^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
+
+Fork mapserver/mapserver from the GitHub UI, and then run:
+
+.. code-block:: bash
+
+    git clone https://github.com/mapserver/mapserver
+    cd mapserver
+    git remote add my_user_name git@github.com:my_user_name/mapserver.git
+
+Working with a feature branch
+^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
+
+.. code-block:: bash
+
+    git checkout main
+    # potentially update your local main against upstream, as described above
+    git checkout -b my_new_feature_branch
+
+    # do work. For example:
+    git add my_new_file
+    git add my_modifid_message
+    git rm old_file
+    git commit -a
+
+    # you may need to resynchronize against main if you need some bugfix
+    # or new capability that has been added since you created your branch
+    git fetch origin
+    git rebase origin/main
+
+    # At end of your work, make sure history is reasonable by folding non
+    # significant commits into a consistent set
+    git rebase -i main
+    # use 'fixup' for example to merge several commits together,
+    # and 'reword' to modify commit messages
+
+    # or alternatively, in case there is a big number of commits and marking
+    # all them as 'fixup' is tedious
+    git fetch origin
+    git rebase origin/main
+    git reset --soft origin/main
+    git commit -a -m "Put here the synthetic commit message"
+
+    # push your branch
+    git push my_user_name my_new_feature_branch
+
+
+From the GitHub UI, issue a pull request.
+
+If the pull request discussion or automated checks require changes, commit
+locally and push. To get a reasonable history, you may need to combine commits
+using ``git rebase -i main``, in which case you will have to force-push your
+branch with ``git push -f my_user_name my_new_feature_branch``.
+
+
+Updating your local main against upstream main
+^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
+
+.. code-block:: bash
+
+    git checkout main
+    git fetch origin
+
+    # Be careful: this will lose all local changes you might have done now
+    git reset --hard origin/main
+
+Commit messages
+^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
+
+Commit messages should indicate a component name (eg a driver name), a short
+description, and when relevant, a reference to a issue (with 'fixes #' if it
+actually fixes it)
+
+::
+
+    COMPONENT_NAME: fix bla bla (fixes #1234)
+
+    Details here...
+
+Commit hooks
+^^^^^^^^^^^^
+
+MapServer provides pre-commit hooks to run code linters before a commit is made. The
+hooks are cloned with the repository and can be installed using
+`pre-commit <https://pre-commit.com>`_:
+
+.. code-block:: bash
+
+    python3 -m pip install pre-commit
+    pre-commit install
+
+
+Once installed, the hooks can be run manually via ``pre-commit run --all-files``.
+
+Blame ignore file
+^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
+
+Due to whole-tree code reformatting done during MapServer 8.2 development,
+``git blame`` information might be misleading. To avoid that, you need
+to modify your git configuration as following to ignore the revision of
+the whole-tree reformatting:
+
+.. code-block:: bash
+
+    git config blame.ignoreRevsFile .git-blame-ignore-revs

en/development/index.txt

@@ -51,6 +51,14 @@ Documentation Process
    documentation
    translation
 
+Development practices
+---------------------
+
+.. toctree::
+   :maxdepth: 2
+
+   dev_practices
+
 Software Testing
 ----------------