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How To Contribute

This page covers the basics of the development process of eobjects.org projects and how you can contribute to this process!

Different kinds of contributions

We are always looking for contributors to help out with the work on DataCleaner. You can help us with a number of interesting tasks:

Java development
Testing
Documentation
Website administration
Donations
Have a whole other idea? Please don't hesistate to contact us!

Joining the process

As Huey Lewies and the News stated, "You don't need a credit card to ride this train" applies to working with eobjects.org :) In general you can participate just by ... participating! If you have an idea (or if you want someone to point you in a direction) you a very welcome to contact the datacleaner team by posting questions on the MailingLists. Sign up for the main DataCleaner development mailing list here:

Software Development Lifecycle

It's hard to generalize the way that software is developed, since there will always be a lot of exceptions to the rules, but here's the principal way that we encourage the development of eobjects.org software. You can click on the links for more elaborated/explaining tutorials on how to do the specific tasks:

Someone has an idea for a new feature and posts his/her idea on the MailingLists or reports it as a new ticket.
After some time of refinement of the new feature through discussion, a trac ticket describing the features is created. More info: TracTickets.
Unittests are implemented to describe the technicalities of the feature. More info: UnitTesting.
The feature itself is implemented to satisfy the unittests. More info: ToolBase and JavaCodingStandards.
The contributor/implementor creates a patch with his or hers contributions and replies to the trac ticket with the patch as an attachment. More info: CreatingPatches.
Unittest and feature code is reviewed by project owner(s).
Unittest and feature code is submitted to subversion.
If any issues arise, they are dealt with just the same way as new features, beginning with a unittest to document the issue.

Submitting code

To avoid misuse, only a limited group of people are allowed to submit code to subversion. If you would like to contribute to the code you can send in a patch by attaching it to the corresponding ticket, see CreatingPatches. It is preferred if the patch is based on the current trunk-version of the project. The patch will then be reviewed and if you've done your job right, it will be submitted and you will be credited for your work!