Page History

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• Communicate - Use the Mailing Lists, this Wiki and the DSpace IRC Chat Channel to communicate with the community
• Congregate - Attend user groups, conferences, library events, developer meetings - and any other venue where DSpace users meet to share information and ideas. If you are a developer (or just interested in developer discussions), join the weekly DSpace Developer Meetings. If you are a repository manager, you may wish to volunteer for the DSpace Community Advisory Team or attend their meetings / online discussions.
• Test - Download and try out beta releases; provide bug reports, experiences, feedback. Our DSpace Demo Server provides a place to test the latest and greatest version of DSpace. If you find a bug, report it via our Issue Tracker (your Wiki Account also works in the Issue Tracker)
• Develop - Contribute bug fixes, new features, developer cycles. Contributing code is far easier than you might think! See the How To Contribute Code section below and the Code Contribution Guidelines for more details.
• Translate - Translate the DSpace user interface into your language, using the new language pack feature of DSpace 1.3 and subsequent versions. See I18nSupport for more details.
• Prototype - The best way to gain support for an idea is to build and share prototype code. If you'd like to share existing prototypes, see the Code Contribution Guidelines for more details.
• Deploy - Share your experiences in deploying DSpaces in different organizations and situations, at large and small scales
• Support - Become active members on the mailing lists, answer others' queries and help solve their technical problems
• Experiment - Take the system for a spin, try it out with different types of content and scenarios; tell everyone what you find. Again, the DSpace Demo Server provides a place to experiment with the latest and greatest version of DSpace. (If you are running a larger, scalability test experiment on the Demo Server, please let us know by emailing the 'dspace-devel' mailing list
• Donate content and metadata - To test and experiment with DSpace, free test collections unencumbered by restrictive usage rights are needed. Contact us via the mailing lists if you have content to donate for testing.
• Request new features / Share ideas - Is there something that you really need out of DSpace or isn't working right? Request new features/improvements or report bugs via our Issue Tracker (your Wiki Account also works in the Issue Tracker). You can also vote on existing features, or add your own comments/suggestions. Both of these can help developers decide which issues are the most important to the community. See the below section on #How To Contribute Ideas or Suggest New Features for more details.
• Help Improve Documentation - Our DSpace Documentation is now managed directly via a new section of our Wiki: DSpace 1.8 Documentation. Although normal Wiki users cannot edit that area of the Wiki, you can always add comments for additions/changes/suggestions. If you are interested in contributing more formally, volunteer to help via one of the mailing lists, and we can add you to our Documentation Team and provide you with access rights to edit/improve the Documentation directly.
• Let us know if there's a way we can ease the process of contributing to DSpace
• Don't be shy! Contributions don't have to be 100% polished or perfect; no one will think any the less of you. "Share early, share often" is a well-known open source mantra. The sooner you contribute something, the sooner others can help with the polishing, and you no longer have to maintain the customization against the evolving core DSpace platform, since it will be part of the platform!

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• The Mailing Lists - Take an active part in the discussion on DSpace.
  • share your thoughts about DSpace
  • ask questions
  • provide feedback

• Official DSpace Documentation
  • add comments to existing docs, to help enhance the existing content
  • volunteer to help improve content or otherwise enhance it

• DSpace Community Sandbox - A Open Source shared community environment for working on DSpace Modules and Prototypes. Add your projects, modules, prototypes and code. Get in touch on the 'dspace-devel' mailing list, to get set up.GitHub - GitHub allows for collaborative & social code development! You can create your own GitHub account (it's free) to get started, and then "fork" our repository to start creating your own modifications (which can be submitted back to us via a GitHub "Pull Request"). For much more information see Developing with Git.

• The Feature/Issue Tracking System (JIRA) (uses same login as Wiki)
  • bug reports
  • feature requests
  • patches
  • add your vote to existing issues, or add your own comments
  • "watch" existing issues (you will receive an email any time a new comment is added or the issue status is updated)
  • volunteer to work on a feature/issue (just add a comment to that issue)

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If you plan to develop new features for DSpace, we recommend forking and cloning our Source Code via Github. SVN access is also available.:

• DSpace github GitHub repository: https://github.com/DSpace/DSpace
• DSpace SVN Repository: http://scm.dspace.org/svn/repo/dspace/
• Browseable View of this SVN (via FishEye): https://fisheye3.atlassian.com/browse/dspace/dspace

Here's a brief summary of what you'll find in SVN:

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More information on using DSpace + GitHub is at: Developing with Git

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• Please be sure to share your plans with the DSpace community on the 'dspace-devel' list (or via one of the weekly Developer Meetings) before embarking on any sizable development effort. This will ensure you achieve your goals in a way that is consistent with the DSpace architecture and plans of the rest of the community. This will minimize the chances of a scenario where you have invested a large amount of time and effort into a body of code that does not fit in with the DSpace architecture or the consensus of the community, meaning that you need to spend further time refactoring your code or worse, 'forking' the code.
• Develop incrementally; try and implement and contribute a basic form of your feature as soon as possible, rather than aiming to implement a complete and 'polished' solution. This will help ensure you're on the right track with regards to the rest of the DSpace community and platform. The sooner your code is part of the core code base, the less time you will have to spend 'chasing' the main code base, i.e. keeping your changes up-to-date with that core code base.
• Obtain the DSpace code using SubversionGitHub. This will make code management much easier. It's very simple to do; see Developer Guidelines and Tools and Developing with Git.
• Read Code Contribution Guidelines to ensure you are following DSpace conventions. This page also gives you a sense of the DSpace Code Approval processes.

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Most of all: Thanks! The more individuals/institutions can give back to DSpace, the better the software is for everyone!

Submitting

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Code Changes

See Code Contribution Guidelines for guidelines that all submissions must adhere to. That page also describes the general process for how a patch/contribution gets accepted into DSpace. The mechanics of creating a patch file are described in Developer Guidelines and Tools.

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You will receive full acknowledgment for contributing the code; so we do encourage you to incorporate your enhancements to DSpace's functionality for everyone to benefit. You will also see benefits since you will neither have to re-incorporate the changes with new versions of DSpace, nor maintain this code solely yourself!

If your code contribution uses third-party products/tools, you should also double-check that they use a compatible open source license. Compatible licenses are listed at: Code Contribution Guidelines#Licensing of Contributions section of the Code Contribution Guidelines page.