Project:Java/Getting Involved

This document aims to provide information on how one can get involved and help out with the Gentoo Java Project. The following are ideas of areas and ways one can help out. Due to the volume of inquiries at times, it's more effective and efficient to provide those looking to get involved with some detailed guidance via this document.

This document is just a guide, not a how to. For questions not address in this document please get in touch with the active developers and contributors via participation on either IRC or our mailing list.

Comments, thoughts, and feedback on this document is greatly appreciated and welcomed.

Participation

Testing

Compile them with a bunch of JDKs (at least stable marked dev-java/icedtea or dev-java/icedtea-bin and dev-java/openjdk or dev-java/openjdk-bin versions should be installed locally).
Check with USE="doc" that javadocs is installed into /usr/share/doc/${PF}/html/api. If the ebuild installs javadocs elsewhere, for example to keep HTML documentation links working, there should still be a symlink to /usr/share/doc/${PF}/html/api.
Run FEATURES="test" USE="test" ebuild <ebuild> clean install (note that not all Java packages have unit tests).
Compile all reverse dependencies if we are talking about a version bump (!rdep <pkg> to jeeves on IRC for example).
Check source:testcases if the package has testcases in our SVN.

Development

Software is bound to have bugs. Reporting bugs found is very important, because there may be some USE cases or scenarios that developers may not have accounted for. Without reporting, the bugs might go unnoticed and never be fixed leaving it for others to run into just as you have.

The number of open bugs assigned to the Java team is a bit astounding. Any help with squashing them is always appreciated.

Community

IRC

Hang around #gentoo-java (webchat). It is a small yet bustling little channel in our corner of Libera.Chat. The primary developers of Java on Gentoo are there most of the time. The channel is like the pulse of the Java team, where most interaction takes place. This means you'll see development as it is happening.

Simply being around showing support is nice. Contributing to discussions that come up, or troubleshooting bugs that arise would be even better.

Mailing list

Joining our java@gentoo.org mailing list and asking/answering questions.

Documentation

Helping us write documentation is always appreciated.

Useful documentation for people wanting to help can be found in:

Evangelism

Spread the word about Gentoo as a Java development platform.

More

So you want to do more eh? Well you can always put in the effort to become an official Gentoo Developer. Please refer to Becoming a Developer in the Gentoo Developer Handbook.

This page is based on a document formerly found on our main website gentoo.org.
The following people contributed to the original document: Petteri Raty (author), William L. Thomson Jr. (author) on January 31, 2008
They are listed here because wiki history does not allow for any external attribution. If you edit the wiki article, please do not add yourself here; your contributions are recorded on each article's associated history page.