Bobby Warner gave a presentation on contributing to open source software like Grails. He discussed various ways to contribute such as filing bug reports, writing documentation, or contributing code. He explained the benefits of contributing such as learning more about the technology and gaining recognition. He then detailed the tools used for Grails development like JIRA, GitHub, and Hudson. He provided a demonstration of how to set up a development environment and make a code contribution to Grails, walking through creating an issue, making code changes, running tests, and submitting a pull request.

1. Contributing Back to Grails
GR8CONF US
July 31st, 2012
Minneapolis, MN
Bobby Warner

2. Who Am I
• Blog
• http://bobbywarner.com
• Social Networks
• @bobbywarner
• https://www.facebook.com/bobbywarner
• http://www.linkedin.com/in/bobbywarner
• http://bobbywarner.com/googleplus

3. Question #1
• How do I contribute to open-source
software?

4. Ways to Contribute
• Send Emails to Mailing List
• Write Blog Posts
• File Bug Reports
• Create Plugins
• Update Documentation
• Write Code

5. Question #2
• Why should I spend time contributing to
open-source software?

6. Benefits of Contributing
• Learn more about the technology
• Gain recognition in the community
• Help evolve the framework
• Customize to meet your needs
• Excuse to learn Git and GitHub

7. Question #3
• How do I contribute to GRAILS?

8. Dev Tools
• Email
• dev@grails.codehaus.org
• JIRA
• http://jira.grails.org
• GitHub
• https://github.com/grails
• Hudson
• http://hudson.grails.org

9. JIRA
• Create new feature requests
• Review old issues
• Vote to help set priority with core team
• Add comments to existing issues
• Submit bug reports
• Provide reproducible example as sample app
• Include tests and bug report

10. JIRA GRAILS Components
• Build System
• Documentation
• Data Binding
• URL Mappings
• View Technologies
• Persistence
• Scaffolding
• Plus many more...

11. GitHub

12. GitHub Repos
• grails/grails-core
• grails/grails-doc
• pledbrook/grails-doc (request commit access)
• grails/grails-howtos (request commit access)
• springsource/grails-data-mapping
• grails-samples
• gpc
• grails-plugins

13. GitHub Grails Core Branches
• Open a pull request on any branch
• master (currently for 2.2)
• 2.1.x
• 2.0.x
• Grails no longer uses “cherry-pick” for 2.1+
• 2.1 branch merged into master periodically

14. GitHub Graphs

15. Hudson

16. Tasks
• Setup Environment
• Code Change

17. Setup Environment
• Step 1: GitHub
• Step 2: Git
• Step 3: Gradle
• Step 4: Clone repo and configure
• Step 5: Test it out
• Step 6: IDE

18. GitHub
• Create account if you don’t already have one
• https://github.com/signup/free
• Fork the repo to your GitHub account
• https://help.github.com/articles/fork-a-repo

19. Git
• git config --global user.name "Your Name Here"
• git config --global user.email "your_email@youremail.com"
• Git aliases in ~/.gitconfig
• https://gist.github.com/1634361

20. Gradle
• Grails is built with Gradle
• Setup the environment variable to configure JVM args
• export GRADLE_OPTS="-server -Xmx768M -Xms768M -XX:PermSize=256m"

21. Clone Repo and Configure
• git clone git@github.com:youraccount/grails-core.git
• git clone git@github.com:youraccount/grails-doc.git
• cd grails-core
• git remote add upstream git://github.com/grails/grails-core.git
• git fetch upstream
• cd ../grails-doc
• git remote add upstream git://github.com/grails/grails-doc.git
• git fetch upstream

22. Test It Out
• cd grails-core
• ./gradlew install
• cd ../grails-doc
• ./gradlew docs
• ./gradlew docs -Dgrails.home=../grails-core)
• ./gradlew publishGuide_en
• Set your $GRAILS_HOME to the grails-core directory
• grails create-app newapp (using the Grails we just built!)

23. IDE
• Eclipse (SpringSource Tool Suite)
• ./gradlew eclipse
• Intellij IDEA
• ./gradlew idea

24. Code Change
• Step 1: Create a JIRA for the change
• Step 2: Create a Git branch and code
• Step 3: Run tests and / or build as needed
• Step 4: Submit pull request and update JIRA
• Step 5: Clean up after merge

25. Create a JIRA

26. Branch and Code

27. Run Tests and Build
• ./gradlew test
• ./gradlew grails-test-suite-persistence:test
• ./gradlew g-t-s-p:test -Dtest.single=MappingDslTest
• ./gradlew grails-test-suite-uber:test
• ./gradlew g-t-s-u:test -Dtest.single=Log4jDslTests
• ./gradlew grails-test-suite-web:test
• ./gradlew g-t-s-w:test -Dtest.single=DataBindingTests
• ./gradlew test -x :g-t-s-p:test
• ./gradlew install

28. Create Pull Request

29. Clean Up

30. Live Demo
• Core update for GRAILS-9052
• Data Mapping update for Mongo
• Doc update for Java EE Containers

31. Next Steps
• User group hackathons
• Code walkthrough screencast(s)

32. Closing
• Thank you for attending this presentation!
• Hopefully you create some pull requests!
• Thank you GR8CONF organizers and sponsors!
• Additional Resources
• http://www.bobbywarner.com/2011/06/20/getting-started-with-grails/
• http://grails.org/screencast/show/21
• http://www.slideshare.net/gr8conf/contributing-to-grails

33. Q &A
• Are there any questions?