Page History

...

• Communicate - Use the Mailing Lists, this Wiki and the DSpace 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 ContributionGuidelines 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 ContributionGuidelines 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 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!

...

• If you have a local developer who has time to work on this feature, let us know when you submit the issue (or add a comment later). If a local developer can already work on the issue/feature request, we may just need to approve the code (see ContributionGuidelines Code Contribution Guidelines, for details on our DSpace Code Approval/Acceptance processes).
• If you know of other institutions with similar needs, tell them to "vote" for your issue request in the Issue Tracker, or add their own use cases/support as comments. Also, if any of them have a developer with time to develop the feature, let us know!
• If you are not sure if other institutions may have this need, you can promote your issue by sending an email to 'dspace-general' or 'dspace-tech' mailing lists, asking for others' feedback. Hopefully, others can add comments/suggestions or even point us in the direction of an interested volunteer developer.
• Even if we cannot find an interested developer in the community, the DSpace Committers will review your request and see if one or more Committers have time to devote towards the work. In some cases, a Committer may be able to convince their institution of the importance of the new feature (again, sample use cases are helpful to convince institutions of a feature's importance).

...

1. We may have a backlog of requests, and just haven't gotten to a formal review yet.
2. We may need to find a developer (or committer) who has time to develop this feature. In these cases, if we can locate other institutions who may be interested, that can often help in the search for a volunteer developer.
3. We may be waiting for the answer to one or more questions posed in earlier comments. If we need more clarification, we can let you know.
4. We may be currently performing a "Code Review" on any submitted code, to ensure it is safe & stable enough to release in DSpace. For more information on our DSpace Code Approval Processes, see ContributionGuidelines Code Contribution Guidelines
5. It's also possible that there are one or more developer(s) actively working on the feature, but that the work is not yet in a "completed" state.

...

• 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 Subversion. This will make code management much easier. It's very simple to do; see Developer Guidelines and Tools.
• Read ContributionGuidelines Code Contribution Guidelines to ensure you are following DSpace conventions. This page also gives you a sense of the DSpace Code Approval processes.

...

1. Add a comment to the Feature/Improvement you plan to work on, letting us know you will work on it.
2. If you'd like more input on the feature/improvement, or potential requirements, post your questions and/or plans as a comment as well.
3. Make sure your developer is following our ContributionGuidelines Code Contribution Guidelines. If you have questions about any guidelines, or want some early feedback/suggestions from developers, please get in touch with us on the 'dspace-devel' listserv. We'd be glad to help make suggestions on ways in which to implement the new feature, and the earlier you get in touch, the earlier we can give you feedback on whether there's anything you may need to change before we can accept it as part of out-of-the-box DSpace. See also the Code Review Process on the ContributionGuidelines Code Contribution Guidelines page.
4. If you run into any "gray areas", ask questions! If it's a development issue, contact the Developers via the 'dspace-devel' listserv. If it's a policy issue or requires feedback from Repository Managers, get in touch with the DSpace Community Advisory Team, as they can help you query the community for feedback and/or provide you with their immediate opinions

...

Submitting a Patch / Code

See ContributionGuidelines 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.

...