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<!DOCTYPE document PUBLIC "-//APACHE//DTD Documentation V1.2//EN" "http://forrest.apache.org/dtd/document-v12.dtd">
<document>
  <header>
    <title>Contributing to Apache Forrest</title>
  </header>
  <body>
    <section id="introduction">
      <title>Introduction</title>
      <p>
        The Forrest Project is an <link href="http://www.opensource.org/">Open
        Source</link> volunteer project released under a very liberal license.
        This means there are many ways to contribute to the project - either
        with direct participation (coding, documenting, answering questions,
        proposing ideas, reporting bugs, suggesting bug-fixes, etc..) or by
        resource donations (staff time, conference presentations, publicity,
        software) and even general hardware/money
        <link href="http://www.apache.org/foundation/thanks.html">donations</link>
        via the ASF.
      </p>
      <p>
        To begin with, we suggest you to subscribe to the
        <link href="site:mail-lists">Forrest mailing lists</link> (follow the
        link for information on how to subscribe and to access the mail list
        archives). Listen-in for a while, to hear how others make contributions.
      </p>
      <p>
        You can get your local working copy of the
        <link href="site:build">latest and greatest code</link> (which you find
        in the Forrest module in the Subversion code repository). Review the
        todo list and the issue tracker, choose a task. Perhaps you have noticed
        something that needs patching, or have a new feature to contribute. Make
        the changes, do the testing, generate a patch, and discuss on the dev
        mailing list. (Do not worry - the process is easy and explained below.)
      </p>
      <p>
        Document writers are usually the most wanted people so if you like to
        help but you're not familiar with the innermost technical details, don't
        worry: we have work for you!
      </p>
    </section>
    <section id="wanted">
      <title>Help Wanted Here</title>
      <p>
        We would be glad to have extra help in any of the following areas:
      </p>
      <ul>
        <li>Assisting to improve documentation.</li>
        <li>Testing Forrest (especially its less-frequently-used features) on
          various configurations and reporting back.</li>
        <li>New samples for the 'forrest seed-sample' to concisely describe
          and demonstrate features. Such samples can also enable automated testing.</li>
        <li>Debugging - producing reproduceable test cases and/or finding
          causes of bugs. Some known bugs are informally listed on To Do, and some are
          recorded as issues (see <link href="#procedure">explanation
      below</link>).</li>
        <li>Providing new use-cases and requirements. If you think that
        Forrest does not quite meet your needs then tell us about it.</li>
        <li>Specifying/analysing/designing new features - and beyond. If you
        wish to get further involved with this, please join the <code>forrest-dev</code> mailing
        list, install and try out Forrest and read some of the
        <link href="site:mail-lists">mail archives</link>. You should have a reasonable
      fluency in XML technologies, some Java and Ant skills, and a basic understanding of the Forrest
      architecture - don't just say "it should have XYZ" without reading anything
      first - because chances are, somebody has already thought of that feature!)</li>
        <li>Packaging easy-to-install packages (such as RPMs) for the myriad of
        possible configurations out there. (The project does not maintain anything but
        the basic <code>.zip</code> and <code>.tar.gz</code> packages, but anyone is
        welcome to build their own specific packages and announce them on the
        <code>forrest-dev</code> list)</li>
        <li>... and there is just one other thing - don't forget to tell everyone
        who asks, how great Forrest is! The more people that know about and start
        to use Forrest, the larger the pool of potential contributors will be.
        </li>
      </ul>
    </section>
    <section id="issues">
      <title>Procedure for reporting bugs and issues and enhancement suggestions</title>
      <p>
        If you think that you have found a bug or you have a suggestion for
        improvement, then please discuss it on one of the
        <link href="site:mail-lists">mailing lists</link>. However, please check
        our Issue Tracker first as it may be already reported.
      </p>
      <p>
        The <link href="site:bugs">Apache Forrest Issue Tracker</link> collates
        our known issues. Obviously not every issue is listed there. Some issues
        have been discussed on the mailing list but do not yet have an issue
        recorded.
      </p>
      <p>
        The Roadmap is the best way to get an overview. The Unscheduled list
        also needs regular review, and committers will schedule some of those
        for the next release.
      </p>
      <p>
        When creating a new issue, please provide a concise Summary Title and a
        short Description. Add further information as Comments and include links
        to the mail archives. The normal procedure is to discuss the issue on
        the mailing list and then add relevant notes to the issue tracker,
        otherwise it becomes cluttered.
      </p>
    </section>
    <section id="cvshowto">
      <title>SVN Usage</title>
      <p>
        An overview of how to use Subversion (SVN) to participate in Forrest
        development. Do not be afraid - you cannot accidently destroy the actual
        code repository, because you are working with a local copy as an
        anonymous user. Therefore, you do not have the system permissions to
        change anything. You can only update your local repository and compare
        your revisions with the real repository. The
        <link href="site:v0.70//build">Building Forrest</link> document
        explains.
      </p>
    </section>
    <section id="ssh">
      <title>SVN Committer with Secure Shell access</title>
      <p>
        After a developer has consistently provided contributions (code,
        documentation and discussion) and demonstrated committment, then the
        rest of the dev community may vote to grant this developer commit access
        to the Subversion repository. See the
        <link href="http://www.apache.org/dev/">ASF developers resources</link>
        especially the
        <link href="http://www.apache.org/dev/version-control.html">Source code
        repositories</link>.
      </p>
      <p>
        You will need secure access to the repository to be able to commit
        patches. Commits to the SVN repository must use the https: protocol. If
        you already have the codebase checked out via the http: protocol, then
        the following command will convert it.
      </p>
      <source>svn sw https://svn.apache.org/repos/asf/forrest/trunk</source>
      <p id="svn-config">
        Line ending issues can be a problem when committing, since developers
        use both Linux and Windows. SVN can understand that files are text (as
        opposed to binary like images), but this must be specified for every new
        file added. Your SVN client can be
        <link href="http://www.apache.org/dev/version-control.html#https-svn">configured</link>
        to automatically do this for certain file extensions. To do it manually,
        make sure all line endings are in your current OS's native format (the
        dos2unix and unix2dos utilities may be useful) and then do a <code>svn
        propset svn:eol-style native myfilename.txt</code> and <code>svn commit
        -m "fix line endings" myfilename.txt</code>
      </p>
    </section>
    <section id="procedure">
      <title>Procedure for Raising Development Issues</title>
      <p>
        There are two methods for discussing development and submitting patches.
        So that everyone can be productive, it is important to know which method
        is appropriate for a certain situation and how to go about it without
        confusion. This section explains when to use the developer
        <link href="site:mail-lists">mailing list</link> and the
        <link href="site:bugs">issue tracker</link>.
      </p>
      <p>
        Research your topic thoroughly before beginning to discuss a new
        development issue. Search and browse through the email archives - your
        issue may have been discussed before. Prepare your post clearly and
        concisely.
      </p>
      <p>
        Most issues will be discovered, resolved, and then patched quickly via
        the developer mailing list. Larger issues, and ones that are not yet
        fully understood or are hard to solve, are destined for the issue
        tracker.
      </p>
      <p>
        Experienced developers use the issue tracker directly, as they are very
        sure when they have found a bug and when not. However, less experienced
        users should first discuss it on the user or developer mailing list (as
        appropriate). Impatient people always enter everything into the issue
        tracker without caring if it is a bug of Forrest or their own
        installation/configuration mistake - please do not do this.
      </p>
      <p>
        As a rule-of-thumb, discuss an issue on the developers mailing list
        first to work out any details. After it is confirmed to be worthwhile,
        and you are clear about it, then submit the bug description or patch via
        Bug Tracking.
      </p>
      <p>
        Perhaps you do not get any answer on your first reply, so just post it
        again until you get one. (But please not every hour - allow a few days
        for the list to deal with it.) Do not be impatient - remember that the
        whole world is busy, not just you. Bear in mind that other countries
        will have holidays at different times to your country and that they are
        in different time zones. You might also consider rewriting your initial
        posting - perhaps it was not clear enough and the readers eyes glazed
        over.
      </p>
    </section>
    <section id="patch">
      <title>How to prepare and contribute patches</title>
      <p>
        If you use the current development version of Forrest via Subversion,
        then do '<code>svn update; svn status</code>' to see what files that you
        have changed. Do '<code>svn diff > mypatch.txt</code>' to make a patch
        which includes every change. To make a patch for a specific file, do
        <code>svn diff src/documentation/content/xdocs/faq.xml >
        faq.xml.diff</code>'. It is better to prepare the patch from the
        $FORREST_HOME directory so that it contains a definite path to the
        document. However, be careful that the patch does not contain other
        work-in-progress.
      </p>
      <p>
        For more information about working with SVN, see
        <link href="http://svnbook.red-bean.com/">Version Control with
        Subversion</link> - the opensource SVN book.
      </p>
      <p>
        If you use a downloaded released version of Forrest (or don't use SVN),
        then use the 'diff' command of your operating system: '<code>diff -u
        faq.xml.orig faq.xml > mypatch.txt</code>' (better to do that from
        $FORREST_HOME directory). If you want to use the most recent version of
        the documentation then grab its source file directly from the
        <link href="http://svn.apache.org/repos/asf/forrest/trunk/site-author/content/xdocs/">SVN
        server</link> (and tell us which Revision number you used).
      </p>
      <note>
        Please send all contributions via our <link href="site:bugs">issue
        tracker</link>. and specify the Forrest version or svn version of the
        source.
      </note>
      <p>
        It is always a good idea to check the Forrest
        <link href="site:bugs">issue tracker</link> before diving in.
      </p>
    </section>
    <section id="revert">
      <title>How to revert changes in SVN</title>
      <p>
        Check out
        <link href="http://svnbook.red-bean.com/en/1.0/ch04s04.html#svn-ch-4-sect-4.2">http://svnbook.red-bean.com/en/1.0/ch04s04.html#svn-ch-4-sect-4.2</link>
        for instructions on how to revert (roll back) changes to svn.
      </p>
    </section>
    <section id="tips">
      <title>Contribution Notes and Tips</title>
      <p>
        This is a collection of tips for contributing to the project in a manner
        that is productive for all parties.
      </p>
      <ul>
        <li>See general ASF
          <link href="http://www.apache.org/dev/contrib-email-tips.html">Tips for email contributors</link></li>
        <li> Every contribution is worthwhile. Even if the ensuing discussion
          proves it to be off-beam, then it may jog ideas for other people. </li>
        <li> Use sensible and concise email subject headings. Search engines,
          and humans trying to browse a voluminous list, will respond favourably to a
          descriptive title. </li>
        <li>Start new threads with new Subject for new topics, rather than
          reusing the previous Subject line. </li>
        <li>Keep each topic focused. If some new topic arises then start a new
          discussion. This leaves the original topic to continue uncluttered. </li>
        <li>Whenever you decide to start a new topic, then start with a fresh
          new email message window. Do not use the &quot;Reply to&quot; button, because
          threaded mail-readers get confused (they utilise the <code>In-reply-to</code>
          header). If so, then your new topic will get lost in the previous thread and go
          unanswered. </li>
        <li> Prepend your email subject line with a marker when that is
          appropriate, e.g. <code>[Proposal]</code>,
          <code>[RT]</code> (Random Thought which quickly blossom into research topics
          :-), <code>[STATUS]</code> (development status of a certain facility). </li>
        <li> When making changes to XML documentation, or any XML document for
          that matter, use a validating XML editor. Here is some assistance
          with editor
          <link href="site:v0.70//catalog">configuration</link>.
        </li>
        <li> Remember that most people are participating in development on a
        volunteer basis and in their "spare time". These enthusiasts will attempt to
        respond to issues. It may take a little while to get your answers. </li>
        <li> Research your topic thoroughly before beginning to discuss a new
        development issue. Search and browse through the email archives - your issue
        may have been discussed before. Do not just perceive a problem and then rush
        out with a question - instead, delve. </li>
        <li> Try to at least offer a partial solution and not just a problem
        statement. </li>
        <li> Take the time to clearly explain your issue and write a concise
        email message. Less confusion facilitates fast and complete resolution. </li>
        <li> Do not bother to send an email reply that simply says "thanks". When
        the issue is resolved, that is the finish - end of thread. Reduce clutter.
        </li>
        <li> You would usually do any development work against the trunk of
        SVN. </li>
        <li> When sending a patch, you usually do not need to worry about which
        SVN branch it should be applied to. The maintainers of the repository will
        decide. </li>
        <li>Keep all project-related discussion on the mailing list. It is much
        better to utilise the wider audience, rather than to break off into
        private discussion groups. You never know who else will have the
        answer to your issues, and anyway other people are interested in
        the outcome.
      </li>
        <li> Become familiar with the mailing lists. As you browse and search,
        you will see the way other people do things. Follow the leading examples. </li>
      </ul>
    </section>
  </body>
</document>
