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Last update : May 2 2001
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Introduction |
The Cactus 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
(coding, documenting, answering questions,
proposing ideas, reporting bugs, suggesting bug-fixes, etc..).
To begin with, we suggest you to subscribe to the
Jakarta Commons mailing list
(Indeed, Cactus is part of the Jakarta Commons project).
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Any mail sent
on the
Jakarta Commons mailing list concerning Cactus should have it's
subject prefixed with [cactus] to differentiate it from
other emails sent for other components (Cactus is only one component of
Jakata Commons).
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Then you can download the latest Cactus
release or checkout the latest code from
CVS.
Last, you can check the todo list and jump
in.
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Help Wanted Here |
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:
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Answering questions on the
jakarta-commons mailing list -
there is often a problem of having too many questioners and not enough
experts to respond to all the questions.
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Testing Cactus (especially its less-frequently-used features) on
various configurations and reporting back.
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Debugging - producing reproducable test cases and/or finding causes of
bugs (bugs can be found in the
bug database).
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Specifying/analysing/designing new features for Cactus (If you wish to
get involved with this, please join
jakarta-commons@jakarta.apache.org ),
install and try out Cactus and read some of the
mail archives.
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Providing automated Ant scripts for new servlet engines/application
servers. The list of supported servers can found in the
features list.
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... and there is just one other thing - don't forget to tell everyone
who asks how great Cactus is! ;-)
The more people that know about and start to use Cactus, the larger the
pool of potential contributors there will be.
Thank you very much.
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Contributions of Code and Documentation |
We are starting to use an informal system for accepting contributions to
Cactus. 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 Cactus
(code or documentation), then it counts as a patch. If
you have a patch and would like to see it incorporated into the Cactus
distribution, take note of the Licensing Requirements listed below, and
then post a message to the jakarta-commons mailing list with
[cactus] [PATCH] in the subject and include a
diff of your patch against the latest CVS version of the code.
Licensing Requirements for the Cocoon Distribution |
To avoid legal problems, the Apache Project Management Committee (PMC)
have agreed on a policy for under what licensing code can be accepted
into Apache projects :
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Source code files must be under the Apache license and must have
copyright assigned to the Apache Software Foundation.
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Jar files need only be released under a license that permits free
redistribution and does not cover new files added to the jar/library
(so the GPL and LGPL are not allowed, but MPL and Apache licenses are,
for example).
By submitting a patch, you signify your understanding and
acceptance of these conditions - like most open source projects
, we do not have the resources nor the inclination to obtain signed
statements from all contributors!
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