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Is this information out of date, and does the above information supercede this information, or do contributors really need to fill out a form prior to attaching a patch to a bugzilla?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
