Welcome, New Committers!

To get started:

1. Send the following information to cwilper (at) fedora-commons.org:
   • Your fedora-commons.org userid (If you don't have one, create one here).  This is used to grant you committer-level permission on the resources hosted on our main website (JIRA, Confluence, Bamboo, etc)
   • Your sourceforge.net userid (If you don't have one, create one here).  The code repository is currently hosted at sourceforge.net, so we need your userid there in order to grant you write access.
   • If you're a Skype user, your Skype userid.  If you don't use Skype, please provide a phone # and/or Instant Messaging info.
2. Sign up to the Fedora Development list.
3. Sign up to the Fedora Codewatch list using your userid@sourceforge.net address.  This is a public list that all committers subscribe to.  It's used solely for automatic notification of Subversion commits and automated test results.  It is necessary to sign up using your sourceforge.net id; commit notification will not work otherwise.  Make sure you have set up your Sourceforge account so that emails to userid@sourceforge.net are forwarded to your usual address.
4. Get familiar with compiling and testing Fedora.

How We Keep In Touch

The team keeps in touch on a day-to-day basis via the development list and Skype.  We generally try to keep significant discussions on the list, but prefer Skype for higher-bandwidth discussions.

We also have bi-weekly, virtual Committer Meetings where we discuss our recent work on the FCRepo project.  This also gives us a way to share what we're doing with interested members of the community (the meeting minutes are public).  Generally, committers employed by Fedora Commons are present at these meetings, and committers from other organizations may attend as their time allows.

What To Work On

While we collectively prefer the high-priority tracker items (as determined by the user community and committers) to be worked on first, all contributions are appreciated.  You may work on any unclaimed items that exist in the FCREPO tracker in JIRA.  If you notice an FCREPO-related bug report/feature request in the Community Support Tracker, please move it to the FCREPO tracker before starting the work.

If you want to work on a new feature that isn't in the FCREPO tracker yet, please bring it up on the development list or in the Committer Meeting so we can talk about the benefit of the feature and how it fits.

Claiming an Issue

Once you have an issue to work on, simply assign yourself as the owner in JIRA.  This lets everyone know that you plan to begin working on the issue soon.  If you find that you cannot complete an issue, you should 1) remove yourself as the owner to give other developers an opportunity to work on it and 2) if you've created a branch for it, remove the branch.

Coding Guidelines

• Code Style
  The project's coding style is currently best described by the Eclipse settings in src/build.  Here are the major rules:
  • Four space indents (Java and XML), spaces, NO TABS
  • K&R style braces
  • Dont use wildcard imports
  • Write Javadocs for public methods and classes.  Keep it short and to the point.
  • Avoid public instance variables; use accessors.
  • Use public methods sparingly; implementation details are not public.
• Logging
  We currently use Log4J for logging.  This may change in the future, but until it does, please be consistent.  When writing log messages (especially INFO, FATAL, and WARN), consider your audience.  Don't over-use INFO; these messages are always logged by default.
• Testing
  Use JUnit for unit, integration, and system tests.  When making changes, please take the time to write tests as needed.  We are not looking for 100% coverage here, but the developers will have a lot more confidence in your code if you can show that it works.  See the readme.txt in the root of the source tree as a jumping-off point for adding your tests to one of the suites.  Here's a brief description of the basic types of tests we run:
  • Unit - Tests a single class.  These tests are typically very quick to run, and therefore get the most use by developers.  Unit tests don't touch the disk or interface with classes other than mocks.  If you can cover a scenario adequately in a unit test, you should prefer implementing it as such (and not as an integration or system test)
  • Integration - Tests multiple classes working together.  May touch disk or interact with a "test" database.
  • System - Works against a running Fedora server in a given configuration.  These are "block box" style tests against the public APIs of Fedora.  These take much longer to run than unit or integration tests because they require significant setup.

Working in a Branch

If you're a new committer, or you're working on a substantial body of code, you should create a branch to work on it.  Here's a guide to branching in subversionif you're not already familiar.

Branches should be created as fedora/branches/fcrepo-123, where "fcrepo-123 is the JIRA id of the issue you're working on.

Sometimes it's convenient to work on multiple issues in a single development branch.  In these cases, you should make sure you've claimed each issue in JIRA, and create a "Code Task" in JIRA that links to each issue via the "addresses" relationship.  This helps us keep track of who is working on what, and where.

When it's time to merge your branch down to trunk, you may request a review by another committer.  Request a review via email, then assign them as the reviewer for the issue (or Code Task) in JIRA and click "Start Review".  When the reviewer is finished, they'll let you know so you can merge your branch down to trunk.

When you've successfully merged your branch, it's useful life is over.  You should therefore remove it from the /branches directory in subversion.

Committing to Trunk

Whether you're merging down from a branch or making changes directly to the trunk, you should be reasonably certain that your change won't break existing code.  One way to quickly check is to run "ant junit" prior to check-in.  If you're still not sure, you may also run several of the system tests as described in the readme.txt in the root of the source tree.

Soon after you commit a change to the trunk, a set of automated tests will begin running on our test server.  You should get an email within an hour indicating whether the test succeeded or failed.  If the tests failed, other developers will be notified via the codewatch list so that they know not to do a "svn update" until you have committed a fix.

Closing an Issue

Once the relevant code has been committed and passes the automated tests, you can resolve the issue in JIRA.  Prior to resolving an issue, double check to make sure the metadata is accurate in the tracker.

How We Do Releases

We try to put out regular releases every few months.  Once a release date is decided, we continue our work on the trunk until about a week before the release.  At this point, we enter "code freeze".  Code freeze officially starts when the release branch is created.  This will be named "release-x.y.z" according to the release number.  The purpose of this branch is to give us a stable reference point for our final tests.  The only changes that should occur on this branch are show-stopper bugfixes and non-code-related edits.

If everything has gone according to plan, a final build is packaged and put into the download area on Sourceforge on release day.  The release branch is then tagged and merged down to trunk.