Why Would I Want to Help?

There are several reasons these are good things.

• By answering other people's questions, you can learn more for yourself
• By submitting your own fixes, they get incorporated faster
• By reporting issues, you ensure that bugs don't get missed, or forgotten
• You are giving back to a community that has given you software for free

How to contribute?

As with any open source project, there are several ways you can help:

• Join the mailing list and answer other user's questions
• Report bugs, feature requests and other issues in the issue tracking application.
• Build Java Apache Shindig or Build PHP Apache Shindig for yourself, in order to fix bugs.
• Submit patches to reported issues (both those you find, or that others have filed)
• Help with the documentation by pointing out areas that are lacking or unclear, and if you are so inclined, submitting patches to correct it. You can quickly contribute rough thoughts to the wiki, or you can volunteer to help collate and organize information that is already there.

Your participation in the community is much appreciated!

Creating and submitting a patch

Note: Be sure to respect our Java code style! You could also read this thread http://markmail.org/message/t6b7jgzvfjj4fiqu.

For new people to the project, creating patches is the way to get started and build your reputation.

1. Start editing the code, since Subversion is being used no checkout is needed
2. Move to top level folder, e.g. cd ~/src/shindig
3. Generate diffs using svn di > fix-xxx-bug.patch
4. If needed, remove from the patch file any changes you do not want to submit until later
5. If you're new, create an account on https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/SHINDIG
6. Create a new issue with the patch:
   1. Follow the "New" link: https://issues.apache.org/jira/secure/CreateIssue!default.jspa
   2. For the "Issue Type", select "Bug", "Improvement" or "New Feature"
   3. Click "Next>>"
   4. Enter summary / description and select the component
   5. Click "Create"
   6. Click "Attach file" and select the mychanges.patch file
   7. Check the "Grant license to ASF for inclusion in ASF works" option
   8. Click on "Watching" and then click on "Start" watching to get updates
7. If your patch includes major changes, the Apache Shindig project uses codereview.appspot.com to review your patch. You need a Google Account to process. Go to the sign up form to create an account if you don't already have one. When creating a codereview issue add dev-remailer@shindig.apache.org as the reviewer and DO NOT add dev@.

The newly created issue will automatically be sent to dev@shindig.apache.org. You should also subscribe using dev-subscribe@shindig.apache.org to see all the feedback, in which case you'll get the updates on the issue without needing to "Watch" them individually.