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This page has a lot of great information on it. But, if you just need the high level overview, here it is. NOTE: the checkboxes below are here for "decorative" purposes, and aren't really intended to be used. If you'd like, and you find it helpful, you may print this page and then check off each step as you proceed with your contribution. Happy coding, and please ask for help if you find you need it!
- Create a ticket in the DSpace Issue Tracker (describe your contribution, how to use it, and perhaps some use cases). This helps ensure your upcoming work is "known" to other developers, and we can let you know if someone else is working on something similar.
- Make sure your code adheres to our Code Style Guide (only required for DSpace 7.x or above)
- Write unit/integration tests per our Code Testing Guide (only required for DSpace 7.x or above)
- Submit your code via GitHub. It is HIGHLY recommended to do so via Please submit a GitHub Pull Request (see GitHub's "About Pull Requests", or our notes on Development with Git), which references your newly created ticket by number (e.g. DS-1234). If you are uncomfortable with Git/GitHub, you may instead attach a patch to the ticket you created. Be warned that the review/approval process for patch files is often much slower, as we first must locate someone to create a Pull Request on your behalf.
- If your code involves changes to the v7 REST API, please also include a REST Contract Pull Request which documents the endpoint(s) that require changes.
- Ideally submit your code or ideas early on before it turns into a massive project. Larger code changes take a very long time to understand, review and test. Starting the discussion early (or breaking the changes up into several smaller changes) can make it much easier to get your code accepted.
- Review your own code. Does it follow our Contribution Checklist? Does it need Documentation? If you are using any third party tools/APIs, do they all have an acceptable Open Source License (see Licensing of Contributions)? The Committers will also be reviewing these aspects of your code, but if you can catch these gaps or issues up front it can speed up the process of correcting them.
- Respond to feedback. If the Committers ask questions or make suggestions for changes, please try to be responsive. The Committers are all volunteers and are trying to help as best we can, but the process moves more quickly if you can try to be responsive as well.
- Help rework/update code as needed. If suggestions for changes are made, if you can rework the code, it speeds up the process. If you submitted your code as a Pull Request, you can just quickly add changes/updates to the branch linked to from your Pull Request.
- Ask questions. If there is a long delay in the Committers responding, or if you aren't sure of the status of your contribution, please ask. We'd be glad to explain whether the delay is just because we are all busy, or if there's something else we are waiting on.
- Pay attention to release deadlines. As the next DSpace release approaches, the Committers will announce a "Contribution Deadline" for the upcoming release (usually the release schedule & deadlines are emailed to all lists in July/Augustthese are found in Developer meeting notes). In order to keep releases on-time, the Committers must set a date after which they can no longer accept new feature contributions. Although you may add code contributions year round, they will only be considered for a specific release if they are contributed before that release's contribution deadline.
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- For Larger Initiatives/Codebases: If you are building out a much larger project, we highly recommend notifying the community of the work early on via an email to dspace-devel@googlegroups.com (or via one of the weekly Developer Meetings or in #dev on Slack). This has several benefits:
- Ensures you achieve your goals in a way that is consistent with the DSpace architecture and plans of the rest of the community.
- Minimizes the chances of a scenario where you have invested a large amount of time and effort into a body of code that does not fit in with the DSpace architecture or the consensus of the community.
- This can help find collaborators or get early feedback.
- Develop incrementally; try and implement and contribute a basic form of your feature as soon as possible, rather than aiming to implement a complete and 'polished' solution. This will help ensure you're on the right track with regards to the rest of the DSpace community and platform. The sooner your code is part of the core code base, the less time you will have to spend 'chasing' the main code base, i.e. keeping your changes up-to-date with that core code base.
- Obtain the DSpace code using GitHub (see also Development with Git). This will make code management contribution much easier. It's very simple to do; see Developer Guidelines and Tools., as we require a GitHub Pull Request for contributions.
- Read Code Contribution Guidelines Read 81953128 (this page), Code Style Guide and Code Testing Guide to ensure you are following DSpace conventions. This will ensure your code is more likely to be immediately accepted as part of out-of-the-box DSpace.
- Ensure that any third-party tools/libraries that you plan to utilize are released under compatible open source licenses. See the Licensing of Contributions section below.
1. Make your code available (
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in GitHub) and create a ticket in our Issue Tracker
Start by creating a new ticket in our GitHub Issues. This ensures that the DSpace Developers are notified of your contribution, and acts as a place for us to comment on the work or make suggestions for improvements.
Once your code is ready, you Once your code is ready, you must make your code available to the other DSpace Committers Group Developers for review. The easiest way for us to review your code is by putting your code into a GitHub . Then, submit a "Pull Request" to our GitHub repository (see also Development with Git). Alternatively, if you are not yet comfortable with GitHub, you may create a patch (and upload it to our DSpace Issue Tracker). However, please be aware that submitting a patch may delay the review process (see below note)
In either case, you must also create a new ticket in our DSpace Issue Tracker. This ensures that the DSpace Developers are notified of your contribution, and acts as a place for us to comment on the work or make suggestions for improvements.
For DSpace, we follow GitHub's "Fork and Pull model" of collaborative development. This means you should fork our DSpace GitHub repository, adding your changes to a branch in your forked repository, and then create a pull request from your fork. In your Pull request, link back to your created issue by saying that the PR "Fixes #issue-id" (e.g. "Fixes #12345") as this will link your PR with the issue ticket.
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Code contributions that meet certain standards are much more likely to be accepted immediately. For a list of our current standards, please read through the Code Contribution Standards section below. | ||
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When making a code contribution, at the very least you should create a new ticket in our DSpace Issue Tracker. In that issue you should provide information as to why you feel this code is a worthwhile contribution (e.g. describe the bug it fixes or a use case that it meets). You can submit your code as an attachment to that ticket (not recommended, see below), or submit it as a Pull Request to our GitHub code repository (highly recommended). We highly recommend submitting a GitHub Pull Request (see Development with Git for hints/tips), which mentions the ticket by number (e.g. DS-1234). In order to add any new feature to DSpace, a Pull Request must be generated (by someone). So, if you are able to create and submit the Pull Request, it makes it that much easier for the Committers to review and accept the changes. If you are unable to create the Pull Request, then the review process may be delayed, as we will need to locate a "steward" for your contribution, i.e. someone who is willing and able to create the necessary Pull Request on your behalfStandards section below. |
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When the next release of DSpace is getting close, the Committers will set a "Feature Contribution Deadline" date, after which no new feature submissions will be accepted for that release. The reason for this is that the Committers need time to review & stabilize the current code before the next release can be completed. Make sure to check the Next Release Status page for details on when the next "Feature Contribution Deadline" is. Please note that bug fixes are still accepted after the "Code Contribution Deadline", as they will help to stabilize the upcoming release. |
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Once the code is made available , the Committers Group will take time to review the work and provide feedback/comments. Usually, one (or more) committers who are interested in this work will contact you and discuss any feedback we in a Pull Request, we will work to find it reviewers/testers. By default, every Pull Request requires at least two separate reviewers (or testers), ideally from two different institutions. Some small PRs (usually 200 lines or less) might be flagged as "1 Approval", meaning only one person needs to review that work. During review/testing, other developers may contact you via GitHub to discuss any feedback they have, and whether or not there would need to be some general changes before we could accept it. Some patches/features are readily accepted (because they are stable and look good), others may require more work (if there are concerns or issues that Committers others notice).
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The timeframe of a code review will vary, based on how much time the Committers core developers have. Smaller changes may be reviewed within days, while larger changes/features may take many weeks to do a full review. All Developers/Committers are volunteers and only have a small amount of time to provide to the project in a given week. We will make every effort to get back to you with feedback within a few weeks. But, if you haven't heard anything, feel free to ask! |
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When we review your code, we are mostly ensuring it generally follows our 81953128 Code Contribution Standards. However, there are a few other things we generally check for:
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3. Reworking Code (if necessary) & Next Steps
After the code review & feedback, interested developers/Committers may help you to rework the code (if needed). They'll also provide you with next steps on getting the code into DSpace. If it can be accepted immediately, it will be. If not, we'll try to help figure out the best route forward.
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As our developers/Committers are all volunteers, they don't always have the time to rework code changes for you. If you want your code change accepted in a timely manner, please offer to make the changes yourself (otherwise your patch suggestion may wait in a "holding queue" until someone has enough time to work on any necessary fixes). |
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If you are unsure of next steps, please let us know by adding a comment to your issue/PR in the Issue TrackerGitHub. Communication is absolutely necessary to ensure that we can help you rework anything that needs reworking. If we don't hear from you, we'll assume you are hard at work. So, if you've run into issues, please let us know! If, locally, you don't have the time or expertise to do the rework that is necessary, also let us know. We can try to locate a community developer to help out, and/or ask both the Committers Team and the DSpace Community Advisory Team if they know of any interested developers with time to spare. |
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Once your code is accepted, it will be released in the next version of DSpace software! It is time to celebrate, as your name will be added to the prestigious list of DSpace ContributorsYour name will appear in the Release Notes as a contributor to that release!
Code Contribution Standards
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- Any changes must be compliant with the supported version of Java (e.g. for DSpace 7, Java 11 compliance is required)
- Your code must adhere to our Java Code Style Guide. Most major IDEs can easily import our Checkstyle configurations to ensure alignment with this code style.
- Your code should be well commented with Javadoc (required for all classes, public methods and larger private/protected methods).
- Your code must provide unit/integration tests for new features, bug fixes or improvements per our Code Testing Guidenew features, bug fixes or improvements per our Code Testing Guide.
- If your contribution adds REST API endpoints or changes existing endpoint(s) behavior, you must submit a corresponding REST Contract Pull Request which documents the require changes.
- If your contribution adds new third-party tools or libraries, they must adhere to licensing requirements to be included. Refer to the Licensing of Contributions below
- User interface changes must be internationalised use i18n keys to allow for easy translation to other languages (see the Internationalization Support (I18nSupport) guide) DSpace 7 Translation - Internationalization (i18n) - Localization (l10n) guide). At a minimum, please provide English text so that others may translate it.
- User interface changes should have a W3C WCAG align with our User Interface Design Principles & Accessibility documentation. Primarily, this is a requirement for W3C WCAG 2.1 Conformance Level of "Double-A".
- Your code must come with Documentation. Minimally, technical documentation must be part of the system docs – see Documentation Contributions below. Ideally, we'd also like User/Usage Documentation.
- Ideally, new features should be configurable (i.e. generalized so as to not be specific to one institution's needs/use cases). Any new configurations should have sane defaults which can be overridden (as needed) in a site's local.cfg file.
- Add appropriate WARN, INFO and DEBUG-level logging. Use the included Apache Log4J toolkit, in concert with the
org.apache.logging.log4j.LogManagerclass to do this./useful logging to your code (ERROR, WARN, INFO, DEBUG, etc).- Provide informative log statements and/or the entire Throwable exception. For example, "log.error('My custom error message', e)" is more useful than "log.error(e.getMessage(), e)"
- Retain backwards compatibility where possibleWhere reasonable, retain feature/functionality backwards compatibility. This does NOT mean you have to create PRs for older versions of DSpace. But, it does mean that you do your best to keep in mind the behavior of features in older DSpace releases, and attempt to keep similar behaviors where reasonable. If there are questions/concerns about this, let us know. There are always exceptions.
- No database schema changes unless absolutely necessary to support a new feature. See Database schema changes below.
- If your code makes changes to the database schema or content, and you are patching more than one branch (for example, dspace-6_x and master), see Patching multiple branches below.
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Omission of one or more of these items is likely to result in the a request for further work. See the Overview of Code Approval Process above, for more information. |
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All new features require documentation before they will be accepted. You may send us code before documentation is completed, but we will be unable to accept that code into DSpace until it is properly documented. Bug fixes may not require documentation, unless they somehow make a modification which changes how DSpace functions.
All documentation is now built in a special section of the Wiki at DSpace Documentation. Therefore, the best way to send us Documentation is to actually create a new page(s) in this DSpace Wiki. You should link these Wiki page(s) to your issue in our DSpace Issue Tracker. We'll move them over into the official DSpace Documentation area once you code has been accepted.
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