This document provides information to help individuals find ways to contribute to Apache projects. It outlines various roles and backgrounds that are welcome to contribute, such as engineers, writers, students, and more. It also provides guidance on how to get started, including finding a suitable project, participating in discussions, addressing issues, and submitting patches for review. The document emphasizes starting small, such as by helping others on mailing lists or reproducing sample issues, and provides several project-specific resources for new contributors.

1. Find your way to Apache
Contribution
Sagara Gunathunga
ASF Commiter/PMC member | Tech Lead at WSO2

2. Can I contribute
to Apache ?

3. Q/A Engineers Business
Analyst
System Admins
Software
Engineers
Tech Writers
Web Developers
IT Students
Researchers

4. How can I find right
project for me ?

6. http://projects.apache.org/indexes/quick.html

7. You can find lot of contribution opportunities
on Apache Incubator projects.

8. Visit the project web site and go
through the documentation.

9. Subscribe to user and dev mailing lists.

10. Download the binary distribution and
spend some time with samples, tutorials
and user guide.

11. Found issue while running
samples ?
• Documentation may be out dated.
• No proper guide exists.
• Mentioned steps are not clear.
• An issue with sample or project code.

12. Get some helps from blogs, mailing list
archive, forums or write to mailing list.
http://mail-archives.apache.org/
http://markmail.org/
http://www.nabble.com/

13. • Try to fix broken samples, improve
existing samples or provide new samples.
• Update or correct documentation, write a
blog to share your experience.
Attach your works as a SVN patch in the
JIRA project.

14. Most of the Apache project use SVN to
manage source codes and JIRA to manage
issues. You can find those locations from
project web site
SVN : http://svn.apache.org/repos/asf/hadoop/common/trunk/
JIRA : https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/HADOOP
SVN : http://svn.apache.org/repos/asf/axis/axis2/java/core/trunk
JIRA : https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/AXIS2

15. Check out source codes and build the
project locally. Maven and Ant are some of
the most popular build systems used by
Apache projects.

16. Use SVN command line tool , graphical tool
or IDE plug-in to generate patches.

17. Attach your patch to appropriate JIRA
issue. It can be source code patch or
documentation patch.

18. Few references for patching process.
• http://www.apache.org/dev/contributors.html
• http://httpd.apache.org/dev/patches.html
• http://jakarta.apache.org/site/contributing.html
• http://pushpalankajaya.blogspot.com/2011/09/docum
entation-patch-submission-for.html

19. Keep your eye on project user mailing list
and help others to solve their issue.
• One of the best approach to learn project
internals and start your contribution.
• If you know the answers don't hesitate to
reply.
• May be you can find a new issue, you can
fill a new JIRA issue and fix it.
• Others will recognize your effort !!

20. Participate to discussions on project dev
list regularly.
• Participate to discussion on dev list with
your opinions/arguments.
• If something difficult
to understand don't hesitate to ask
questions.
• Suggest your new ideas don't spend
time for self judgment.

21. Go through the JIRA project and find a
simple issue to work on.
• Try to reproduce the issue using provided
samples and configuration.
• Read previous comments and spend some
time for background reading.
• If you need more inputs or clarifications ask
them by commenting on JIRA or dev list.
• Attach your current works as a patch and
ask community to review your works.

22. Study some of the important programming
techniques.
• Debugging
• Unite testing
• Remote debugging
• Profiling
• Memory analysis

23. Expose your experience and ideas to others.
• Do you have a blog ? Maintain a blog
regularly.
• Usually we have seen lot of revolutionary
ides from users and new contributors.
• If you are a student, GSoC is the best way to
start your contribution ( with some privileges).
• Write to dev list asking possible GSoC
project ideas or come up with your own
ideas.

24. Project specific contribution
• Most of the Apache projects maintains their
own new contribution guides.
• Look for "New contributor guide", " How to
contribute guide", "developer guide" etc.
• Don't hesitate to ask on the community
development mailing list
visit http://community.apache.org/.

25. Apache communities
• Try to organize small events like MeetUps and
BarCamp in your town , office or university.
• We have volunteers and resources to help
you.
• What do you need to care ?
• Venue - better to find a free venue.
• Refreshments
• Ask to bring laptops.
• Notify among your local communities.
• Contact ASF.
Small event list :
small-events-discuss-subscribe@apache.org
Apache event LK list :
http://groups.google.com/group/apache-event-lk

26. Thank You !
sagara@apache.org
http://ssagara.blogspot.com