Presented at Lucene/Solr Revolution 2016

1. O C T O B E R 1 1 - 1 4 , 2 0 1 6 • B O S T O N , M A

2. Participating in the Community: Beyond Code
Cassandra Targett
Director of Engineering, Lucidworks

3. 3
02

4. 4
• Director of Engineering at Lucidworks
• manage the Open Source team
• Lucene/Solr committer and PMC member
• Not a programmer
About Me
01

5. 5
Why Contribute to Open Source
Understand Solr Better Improve Your SkillsMake Solr Better

6. 01
My boss won’t let me
I don’t have time
I don’t know enough about Solr
I’m not great with Java

7. 7
• No one knows
everything about Solr
• If you are using Solr,
you know enough to
contribute
Obstacle: I don’t know enough about Solr

8. 8
• Make it easy for yourself to work in short
bursts
• Start small
• Feedback (+1/-1) is a contribution
Obstacle: I don’t have time
01

9. 9
• Will take too much of a developer’s time
• Project is not a Core Competency
• “Legal” Won’t Like It
• Can’t let competitors know what we’re working on
• Might expose our Intellectual Property
• Don’t understand how the community works
Obstacle: My boss won’t let me

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• Who has the objection? Is it your boss or the company?
• Can you take out proprietary stuff?
• Cost of maintenance of customizations locally
• Good citizenship
• Helps build your skills
Possible Counter-Arguments
01

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• Neither am I
• Solr still needs
YOU
Obstacle: I’m not a Java Programmer
01

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What Tools Can
You Work With?

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• It’s easy to be overly vague (“It’s broke”)
• Concrete feedback is a contribution (“When I do XYZ
steps, I get these errors”)
• Can you add anything to advance the problem toward
a solution?
• What would make life easier for future users?
What Is a Contribution?

14. 14
• Solr Ref Guide missing lots of stuff
• Tutorials
• Getting Started
• Use Cases
• Best Practices
• Changes in recent releases
Documentation

15. 15
• Editing limited to committers
• Comments or JIRA issues are main way for non-
committers to contribute
• Online is only for the next release. The PDF is 700+
pages long.
Documentation Today

16. 16
• Docs with
Code
• Written with
Asciidoc
• Static HTML
built with
Jekyll and
Asciidoctor
tools
Documentation Future

17. 17
• Docs with code means ability to submit patches and
pull requests
• Online versions for each release
• Online as the primary presentation mode (will still
produce a PDF)
Benefits of New Doc System

18. Link to
another
page
This
page will
have a
TOC
Comment
Headings
Page
title
Italics

19. All rendering of
text, headings,
links, etc.
managed by CSS
HTML Output

20. Defines doc
attributes,
some for
output
Include full
text of another
page
Separate the
“book” into
parts

22. Info Blocks
Supported:
WARNING
NOTE
TIP
CAUTION
IMPORTANT

24. Code Examples

26. Code Callouts
* Other languages use a different syntax for a callout; most use line comment syntax, such as // or #, etc.

27. Labeled List
Level 1
Level 2

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• Solr-user list is high-volume, ~1000 mails/month
• Help new users understand how to ask their question
• Identify XY problems
• Point users to documentation or explain terminology
Mailing List & IRC

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• We need help with issues
• 2,807 open issues
• 2,466 opened more than 6 months ago
• Try to reproduce with the latest Solr,
provide steps to reproduce if it still
exists
Verify JIRA Issues

31. 31
Advancing a Bug Report
Report a Problem
Show Logs & Steps to Reproduce
Write a Test to Reproduce
Find Possible Cause in Code
Provide a Patch
Commit Fix

32. 32
• If an issue has a patch, see if it applies cleanly and helps
resolve the problem (and doesn’t cause other issues)
• Tests that prove the problem are so helpful
How Can You Advance an Issue?

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• 14 Ways to Contribute to Solr without Being a
Programming Genius or a Rock Star: https://
lucidworks.com/blog/2012/03/26/14-ways-to-
contribute-to-solr/
• Solr Example Reading Group: bit.ly/SolrERG
More Ideas

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• Solr needs more users sharing their experiences
• Your feedback is welcome
• Your contributions are needed
Summing Up

35. Thank You
@childerelda
ctargett@apache.org