Craig,
Thanks for the response! Definitely a helpful set of guidelines. It just
seems like the Tomcat is project is so understaffed (!) and has so much
potential, I would like to help out as soon as I can. Like Nacho (who
replied to me privately) said, maybe it is not as much pure expertise as it
is willingness to learn and contribute to the project (as he put it, being
Intrepid :). Something as complicated as Tomcat, I am sure, has many aspects
that could be hacked without having the servlet spec "pasted on the inside
of my eyeballs"; printed next to me or in a browser window should be
sufficient. Expect me to make some noise here in the future. :)
Cheers!
Mike
-----Original Message-----
From: Craig R. McClanahan [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: Friday, November 03, 2000 11:58 AM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: Tomcat 4.0 Milestone 4
Michael Percy wrote:
> Costin,
> I believe there would be (or at least SHOULD be! :) many more contributors
> to these projects (Tomcat), but maybe some of us are intimidated by the
> level of apparent expertise required for this stuff. (Then again, I know
we
> have some damn good people on these lists.) I am curious, is this the
case?
> Have you all been writing java apps for years and are steeped in C++ and
OOP
> for the last decade? Do you have the servlet spec pasted on your wall?
>
Michael,
In my particular case the servlet spec is pasted on the inside of my
eyeballs
:-) But I'm kind of a wierd case in that respect, because I'm on the
JSR-053
expert group that worked on the new specs (servlet 2.3 / JSP 1.2).
Personally, I've been a software developer/designer/architect in some
fashion or
another for more years (and in more languages) than I care to admit. But I
got
involved in the Apache JServ project (predecessor to Tomcat) a few years ago
when I needed a cheap server solution for an Internet-based application that
I
needed to build. Like everyone, I was grumbling about how long it took for
JServ to get to final release (over a year from 0.9 to 1.0), until my son --
who
likes PHP but I love him anyway :-) -- said "Dad, you know Java, get in
there
and help them finish it!". So I did.
I wouldn't worry to much about expertise (although clearly Java is a must,
and
familiarty with the specifications that Tomcat implements -- servlet, JSP,
HTTP,
etc. -- is vital on this particular project). The ways that people get
involved
in open source are pretty varied, but a common course might go something
like
this:
* You see something that you think should be
added, or that doesn't seem to work quite right
* You investigate the existing code, becoming more
familiar with it along the way
* You might ask a "what would you think if we did this?"
type question on the developer list
* You contribute to the discussion of these ideas
(yours and others) - partly to gain knowledge but also
partly to become known to the community
* At some point, you propose a patch, or a new chunk
of code that gets accepted into the code base (the
detailed rules for Tomcat are on the Jakarta web site)
* Iterate the above a few times, perhaps looking at bigger
and bigger chunks of code as you gain more understanding
* At some point, when it is evident that you're not a bozo :-),
you can get nominated for committer status and voted on
by the developer community, and then be able to post the
changes directly yourself.
>
> How can I, a perl hacker and aspiring java coder get involved? (How do you
> guys know what to do?) At what point would I be considered to be "good
> enough" to really contribute some code? Server-side java simply rocks, and
> if I could help make it a more viable option for everyone (including
myself
> and my company) then I would love to do it.
>
It all starts by becoming familiar enough with the current code base to
start
understanding it. In most open source projects there is never enough
architectural documentation, so this often involves asking "how does this
work"
type questions on the developer list. Don't feel bad about that -- NONE of
us
knew anything about Tomcat internals before we started working on it :-)
>
> Hope this isn't a totally inane question, but it has been on my mind for a
> couple weeks. Just wondering...
>
Not at all inane -- I hope the above thoughts help.
>
> Thanks,
> Mike
>
Craig
---------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
---------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]