Contributing

Contributing

We're always looking for contributions! Here are some ways to participate in XWiki's development:

• By sending feedback to the user or dev mailing lists. The feedback could be about something that does not work, something that could be improved, a feature you'd like to see, etc. Or simply it could be that you're a happy user. Letting us know helps a lot!
• By answering emails from others on the mailing lists.
• By sending code patches. In that case there are a few rules you need to know.
• By spreading the word about XWiki (Article, Blog, Books, Talks at conferences, Discussion with colleagues, etc)!
• By translating XWiki in a given language or improving an existing translation

Strategies for answering on the XWiki lists

Here's a good strategy that improves the XWiki documentation on xwiki.org:

1. someone (A) asks a question on a xwiki list
2. someone (B) knows the answer
3. B verifies that the answer can be found on xwiki.org and if so gives a link to it in the reply to A
4. If the answer is not found on xwiki.org, then B adds it (*) and then gives a link to it in the reply to A

What happens otherwise is that usually people answer in the email, often giving very long and elaborate answers with lots of knowledge/wisdom in it. Then another person comes in, asks the same question and we answer again, etc. The result is:

• the xwiki.org documentation is not better
• overall as a team we are less efficient

• For code snippets, add it to the Code Zone
• For questions on how to use XWiki, please add it to the Features guide
• For development questions, add it to the Developer's guide
• For configuration questions and administration questions, add it to the Administration guide
• For other questions, add them to the FAQ

Providing translation for a given language

• Translate the ApplicationResources.properties file into the language you want (check if such a translation doesn't already exist of course).
• Create a JIRA issue and attach your translation to the issue
• Make sure your resource file only contains Unicode code points and only ASCII characters. You can use native2ascii for transforming non ASCII chars to ASCII chars or simply use your IDE as most IDE support doing this transformation for you automatically.

Creating and submitting a patch

When you have either completed a JIRA issue or just want some feedback on the work you have done, create a patch and attach the patch to the JIRA issue in question. We have a couple of guidelines when creating patches:

• Always create the patch from the root of the project.
• Always provide a single patch and not several diff files. If you're adding new files, svn add them first so that they appear within the single patch file.
• If this was a new piece of work without a JIRA issue, create a JIRA issue for it now.
• Attach the patch to the JIRA issue you were working on (do not paste its content in as a comment though). When adding the patch add a comment to the issue explaining what it does. Shortly after, someone will apply the patch and close the issue.

An example on how to create a patch from the command line:

$ svn diff > XWIKI-123-something.patch

If you are picking up an issue with a existing patch attached to the issue you can apply the patch to your working directory directly from JIRA like this. The wget and patch commands will only be available if you are on a UNIX platform or using Cygwin on Windows.

$ wget -O - -q <URL to the patch from JIRA> | patch -p0

If the patch is in a local file {{XWIKI-123.patch}} and you want to apply that use this command:

$ patch -p0 < XWIKI-123.patch

A couple of notes:

• If you are using another tool for creating patches, make sure that the patch doesn't include absolute paths. Including absolute paths in the patch will make the useless for us as we most likely don't have the same directory structure as you.
• Put license headers in newly created files (java classes, pom files, etc).
• Make sure that you follow our code style.

Patch acceptance criteria

There are a number of criteria that a patch will be judged on:

• Whether it works and does what is intended. This one is probably obvious!
• Whether it fits the spirit of the project. Some patches may be rejected as they take the project in a different direction to that which the current development community has chosen. This is usually discussed on an issue well before a patch is contributed, so if you are unsure, discuss it there or on the mailing lists first. Feel free to continue discussing it (with new justification) if you disagree, or appeal to a wider audience on the mailing lists.
• Whether it contains tests. It is expected that any patches relating to functionality will be accompanied by unit tests and/or integration tests. It is strongly desired (and will be requested) for bug fixes too, but will not be the basis for not applying it. At a bare minimum, the change should not decrease the amount of automated test coverage. As a community, we are focusing on increasing the current coverage, as there are several areas that do not receive automated testing.
• Whether it contains documentation. All new functionality needs to be documented for users, even if it is very rough for someone to expand on later. While rough is acceptable, incomplete is not. As with automated testing, as a community we are striving to increase the current coverage of documentation.

Coding rules

If you submit a patch you need to follow these rules:

• Put the correct Copyright in the files
• Ensure that your code passes the build. Note that the build contains some Checkstyle checks that your code must pass.
• Ensure that you have unit tests and/or integration tests
• Use the same code formatting as the existing code.
• Create a JIRA issue and attach your patch to it.
• Create documentation for what you have added on xwiki.org.
• Add your name on the Hall Of Fame page.

Thanks!