Hi,
I have some questions about how to contribute to BIRT.
I've looked through the information on the community page (
http://www.eclipse.org/birt/phoenix/community.php) of
the web site and outlined the process I believe is required to make a
contribution.
1) Select an existing bug to work on, or enter a new
bug to add a minor feature.
2) Attach a patch to the bugzilla.
3) Send
an email to the birt-dev mailing list asking for a committer to review the
patch.
I have questions about this process.
The BIRT Project
Charter page,
http://www.eclipse.org/birt/phoenix/project/charter.php,
has a section called Roles. The definition of developers is 'Users who
contribute code or documentation become developers.'
Referring to the
information at this location:
http://wiki.eclipse.org/index.php/BIRT/FAQ/Birt_Project#Contribution
the information under the question,
'Q: How can I contribute to
the BIRT Project?'
seems pretty straightforward and states that
documentation and articles for the web site are welcome, but the next section
is confusing.
Q: How can I contribute code to the BIRT Project?
Eclipse has an extensive process for code contributions. (LINK) Briefly,
start by completing the (NAME) form required for all code submitters. Then,
follow the (STUFF) development process to first submit bugs & patches via
Bugzilla.
Is this information out of date, and does the above
information supercede this information, or do contributors really need to fill
out a form prior to attaching a patch to a bugzilla? Also, the LINK,
NAME, and STUFF words do not link to anything.
The answer to the next
question is also confusing:
Q: I'd like to help develop BIRT. How do I
do that?
Start with the above process. Eventually, if you're level of
participation remains high, and your code is of good quality, the development
team can vote to make you a committer. All Eclipse Foundation projects must
follow the Eclipse Development Process.
In brief, you have to earn the
right to be contributor. On other projects, this was done by submitting code
patches, bug fixes, etc. (See above) On the Web Tools project (WTP), there are
people that have a related open source project or plug-in and have donated it
to the WTP project and became contributor this way.
Do you have to
earn the right to be a contributor, or should that be committer?
Developers (as defined above in the Roles section) can attach patches
to bugs, but it appears that they can not assign bugs to themselves, is this
correct?
How do developers know if someone (either a committer, or
another developer) is already working on a bug? Doesn't this mean that two
people might be working on the same bug?
Regards,
Susan
