Hi, All,

I would think that anyone sincerely wants to help would be welcome to
contribute to the project, right?

I am very sincere here, and want to help with the development of Tomcat
project. As a big believer of open source and benefited from GNU,
Linux, and other open source software for years, I would like to
contribute back to the open source community by contributing to Tomcat.


My question is about from project management perspective, how new
comers to the project like myself can contribute more effectively.

I have carefully read through the "How to Get Involved", "Project
Guidelines" Craig R. McClanahan's "Contributing", etc., several times.
I followed the instructions of subscribing to dev/user lists,
downloading/installing/using Tomcat etc. However, those are mostly
things in user land, and there is not much information/design
docs/specs to get developers started. I can see that there will be a
long way to get familiar with various standards/specifications and
Tomcat internal code, and to contribute code/patch or even join the
discussions and contribute ideas.

I am not in the 'scratch my own itch' situation and have no natural
places in current releases to start features/bug fixes. I am 
interested in the technologies involved in Tomcat and would like to
contribute to the forward development of Tomcat 5.x if possible and
learn along the way.

I would like to get involved faster and start to contribute earlier
with some helps from people already in the project. 

>From software engineering perspective, I could start to contribute to
less involved modules with well defined specs before I get to
understand other/more involved part of Tomcat. For example,

- I saw suggestions that the web based administration and manager
interface/functionality could be expanded to be more comprephensive.
This part involves UI and Tomcat configurations, and is more in the
user space than other part of the Tomcat.

- Logging facilities in Tomcat. If there is any reason to enhance that
part of Tomcat, for example.

- Any other small/low impact modules that current committers can
provide some leads by defining requirements or specs.

- Low priority bugs that doesn't hurt to have new comers to take time
to work on.

So, it would be very helpful if any of the current
contributors/committers could take some time to define the scopes and
requirements of modules/components that are suitable for new comers,
triaging low priority/less involved bugs, and coordinate the
integration.

And there could be other forms of contributions too. Like tasks that
require man power but less programming expertise to get new comers
started:

- QA/RT tasks. Are there dedicated QA resources for the project, or all
developers porform most of the testing themselves?

- Release management. Integration, build, release. Are there any needs
for these type of resources?

- Documentation, Guide, web site maintenance.

- Other administrative tasks.

If helps on any of these are needed, anyone currently in the project
can help new comers as well as the project in a whole by coordinating
the definition of tasks and allocations of available resources.

I'd apprecate your feedback on this!

Thanks!

Lei

--- Amy Roh <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Vaughn,
> 
> Vaughn Bilton wrote:
> > I apologize in advance if I'm not following proper protocols for
> this
> > submission, but I'm new at this. I have created a patch against
> Tomcat
> > 4.1.10 which adds a custom tag and associated servlet to the Tomcat
> > admin context. The tag, designed to replace a text field expecting
> a
> > file/directory path entry, creates a text field and button
> combination
> > on the page. Clicking the button opens up a popup window allowing
> the
> > user to navigate the file system and select a file/directory.
> Clicking
> > "Okay" closes the popup window and places the selected path in the
> text
> > field. It's been tested under RedHat 7.2 and Windows 2000. I find
> this
> > feature useful, and I would like to make the patch available to
> whoever
> > would like to use it, but I'm not sure how to go about doing this.
> > 
> 
> Sounds like a very useful feature.  Send the patch to this list. 
> I'll 
> take a look at it.
> 
> Thanks,
> Amy
> 
> 
> --
> To unsubscribe, e-mail:  
> <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> For additional commands, e-mail:
> <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> 



__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! News - Today's headlines
http://news.yahoo.com

--
To unsubscribe, e-mail:   <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
For additional commands, e-mail: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>

Reply via email to