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The Apache Cocoon Project is an Open Source
volunteer project under the auspices of the
Apache Software Foundation (ASF),
and, in harmony with the Apache webserver itself, it is released under
a very open 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 (money, time, publicity, hardware, software, conference
presentations, speeches, etc...).
To begin with, we suggest you to subscribe to the
Cocoon mailing lists
(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 contibutions.
You can get your local working copy of the
latest and
greatest code (which you find in the xml-cocoon2 module in
the cvs.apache.org CVS code repository, or from the
CVS snapshots).
Review the todo list, choose a task
(or perhaps you have noticed something that needs patching). Make the
changes, do the testing, generate a patch, and post to the cocoon-dev
mailing list. (Do not worry - the process is easy and explained below.)
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!
For financial support in particular, the Cocoon Project and the ASF in general
is closely collaborating with the Collab.net
SourceXchange program that will provide a legal, solid and
well-established resource for money collecting to fund software production
under the open source flag. Please, feel free to contact directly
the ASF President and Collab.net co-founder Brian
Behlendorf for more information on how to contribute financially to the
advancement of this project.
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The rest of this document is mainly about
contributing new or improved code and/or documentation, but we would also be glad to have
extra help in any of the following areas:
- Answering questions on the
cocoon-users mailing list - there is often a problem of
having too many questioners and not enough experts to respond to all the questions.
- Testing Cocoon (especially its less-frequently-used features) on various configurations
and reporting back.
- Debugging - producing reproduceable test cases and/or finding causes of bugs. Some known bugs are informally listed on
To Do, and some are recorded in Bugzilla
(see explanation below).
- Specifying/analysing/designing new features for Cocoon - and beyond. (If you wish to get involved
with this, please join
cocoon-dev@xml.apache.org
(you may also want to join xsp-dev@xml.apache.org ), install and try out Cocoon
and read some of the mail archives.
You should have a strong "fluency" in XML technologies, Java and a basic understanding of
the Cocoon architecture - don't just say "it should have XYZ" without reading anything first -
because chances are, someone's already thought of that feature!)
- Packaging easy-to-install packages (such as RPMs) for the myriad of possible configurations out
there. (The Cocoon project does not maintain anything but the basic
.zip and
.tar.gz packages, but anyone is welcome to build their own specific packages and
announce them on cocoon-users )
- ... and there is just one other thing - don't forget to tell everyone who asks, how great Cocoon is! ;-)
The more people that know about and start to use Cocoon, the larger the pool of
potential contributors there will be
- so, please, help us by placing the Cocoon logo somewhere in your
site to indicate that you are using and supporting the Cocoon Project.
Thank you very much.

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 | Contributions of Code and Documentation |  |
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We are starting to use an informal system for accepting contributions to Cocoon.
The process varies depending on whether the contribution is a modification (i.e. patch)
or a fairly standalone item, and whether you have commit access (committers have been
granted access by a vote of confidence, so they are assumed to be trustworthy enough
to make changes directly in CVS. If you submit many good patches, you may be
nominated as a committer yourself!)
If your contribution requires changing more than a few lines of Cocoon (code or
documentation), then it counts as a patch. If you have a patch and
would like to see it incorporated into the Cocoon distribution, take note of the Licensing
Requirements listed below, and then read the section
Procedure for Raising Development Issues
Otherwise (that is, if it does not require patching or you are not particularly interested in
having it included in the main distribution), your code and/or
documentation can be listed on the
Third-Party Contributions page.
The rationale for this split is that core patches may fix important issues, and may
require timely attention if they are not to go
out-of-date and become useless, but other contributions can simply be downloaded and
applied by users who wish to use them.
A typical contribution (not a patch) may go through the following stages:
- Posted to cocoon-users with a URL to download it from.
- Listed on 3rdparty.html by a maintainer. [No requirements, other than relevance (at the moment).]
- Inclusion into the
contrib directory,
which is for 3rd-party contributions that have been tested, but are not necessarily
mature enough or general enough for the main distribution. [Must be tested at least as
specified below. See also Licensing Requirements below.]
- Inclusion into the main distribution. [Committers must be confident that it should work properly in
most/all environments, it must be documented as appropriate, and it must be considered sufficiently
useful and general to go into Cocoon. See also Licensing Requirements below].
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An overview of how to use CVS to participate in Cocoon 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.
(Further general CVS usage information is at
www.cvshome.org and your local
info cvs pages or man cvs pages or user
documentation.)
Let us lead by example. We will show you how to establish your local
repository, how to keep it up-to-date, and how to generate the differences
to create a patch. (The commands are for Linux.)
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 | Procedure for Raising Development Issues |  |
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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
cocoon-dev mailing list
and when to use
Bugzilla
(the Apache Bug Database).
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.
Most issues will be discovered, resolved, and then patched quickly
via the cocoon-dev mailing list. Larger issues, and ones that
are not yet fully understood or are hard to solve, are destined for
Bugzilla.
Experienced developers use Bugzilla 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 Bugzilla
without caring if it is a bug of Cocoon or their own
installation/configuration mistake - please do not do this.
As a rule-of-thumb, discuss an issue on the cocoon-dev
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 Bugzilla.
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 re-writing your initial
posting - perhaps it was not clear enough
and the readers' eyes glazed over.
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 | Contribution Notes and Tips |  |
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This is a collection of tips for contributing to the project in a manner
that is productive for all parties.
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Every contribution is worthwhile. Even if the ensuing discussion
proves it to be off-beam, then it may jog ideas for other people.
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Use sensible and concise email subject headings. Search engines, and
humans trying to browse a voluminous list, will respond favourably to a
descriptive title.
- Start new threads with new Subject for new topics, rather than
re-using the previous Subject line.
- Keep each topic focussed. If some new topic arises then start a new
discussion. This leaves the original topic to continue un-cluttered.
- Whenever you decide to start a new topic, then start with a fresh
new email message window. Do not use the "Reply to" button,
because threaded mail-readers get confused (they utilise the
In-reply-to header). If so, then your new topic will get
lost in the previous thread and go un-answered.
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Prepend your email subject line with a marker when that is appropriate,
e.g.
[Patch] , [Proposal] ,
[RT] (Random Thought which quickly blossom into research
topics :-), [STATUS] (development status of a certain
facility).
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When making changes to XML documentation, or any XML document for that
matter, use a
validating parser
(one that is tried and true is
SP/nsgmls).
This procedure will detect errors without having to go through the whole
build docs process to find them. Do not expect Cocoon
or the build system to detect the validation errors for you - they can
do it, but that is not their purpose. (Anyway, nsgmls validation error
messages are more informative.)
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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.
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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.
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Try to at least offer a partial solution and not just a problem statement.
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Take the time to clearly explain your issue and write a concise email
message. Less confusion facilitates fast and complete resolution.
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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.
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You would usually do any development work against the HEAD branch of CVS.
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When sending a patch, you usually do not need to worry about which CVS
branch it should be applied to. The maintainers of the repository will
decide.
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If an issue starts to get bogged down in list discussion, then it may
be appropriate to go into private off-list discussion with a few interested
other people. Spare the list from the gory details. Report a summary back
to the list to finalise the thread.
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Become familiar with the mailing lists. As you browse and search, you will
see the way other people do things. Follow the leading examples.
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