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Are you a new developer looking for how to get started with DSpace?  Take a look at our New Developers Hub

Contributing to DSpace Software

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This presentation was given at Open Repositories 2014 in Helsinki, Finland. It provides some tips on how and why you may wish to contribute to DSpace:

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https://www.slideshare.net/

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tdonohue/hack-d-spacecommunityor14

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Ways To Contribute and Participate

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  • Communicate - Use the Mailing Lists, this Wiki and the DSpace IRC Chat Channel Slack to communicate with the community
  • Congregate - Attend user groups, conferences, library events, developer meetings - and any other venue where DSpace users meet to share information and ideas. If you are a developer (or just interested in developer discussions), join the weekly DSpace Developer Meetings. If you are a repository manager, you may wish to volunteer for the DSpace Community Advisory Team or attend their meetings / online discussions.
  • Test - Download and try out beta releases; provide bug reports, experiences, feedback. Our DSpace Demo Server provides a place to test the latest and greatest version of DSpace. If you find a bug, report it via our Issue Tracker (your Wiki Account also works in the Issue Tracker)
  • Develop - Develop - Contribute bug fixes, new features, developer cycles. Contributing code is far easier than you might think! See the 81953153 How To Contribute Code section below and the Code Contribution Guidelines for more details.
  • Translate - Translate the DSpace user interface into your language, using the new language pack feature of DSpace 1.3 and subsequent versions. See Internationalization Support (I18nSupport DSpace 7 Translation - Internationalization (i18n) - Localization (l10n) for more details.
  • Prototype - The best way to gain support for an idea is to build and share prototype code. If you'd like to share existing prototypes, see the Code Contribution Guidelines for more details.
  • Deploy - Share your experiences in deploying DSpaces in different organizations and situations, at large and small scales
  • Support - Become active members on the mailing lists, answer others' queries and help solve their technical problems
  • Experiment - Take the system for a spin, try it out with different types of content and scenarios; tell everyone what you find. Again, the DSpace Demo Server provides a place to experiment with the latest and greatest version of DSpace. (If you are running a larger, scalability test experiment on the Demo Server, please let us know by emailing the 'dspace-devel' mailing list
  • Donate content and metadata - To test and experiment with DSpace, free test collections unencumbered by restrictive usage rights are needed. Contact us via the mailing lists if you have content to donate for testing.
  • Request new features / Share ideas - Is there something that you really need out of DSpace or isn't working right? Request new features/improvements or report bugs via our Issue Tracker (your Wiki Account also works in the Issue Tracker). You can also vote on existing features, or add your own comments/suggestions. Both of these can help developers decide which issues are the most important to the community. See the below section on 81953153 for more How To Contribute Ideas or Suggest New Features for more details.
  • Help Improve Documentation - Our DSpace Documentation is now managed directly via a new section of our Wiki: DSpace Documentation. Although normal Wiki users cannot edit that area of the Wiki, you can always add comments for additions/changes/suggestions. If you are interested in contributing more formally, volunteer to help via one of the mailing lists, and we can add you to our Documentation Team and provide you with access rights to edit/improve the Documentation directly.
  • Let us know if there's a way we can ease the process of contributing to DSpace
  • Don't be shy! Contributions don't have to be 100% polished or perfect; no one will think any the less of you. "Share early, share often" is a well-known open source mantra. The sooner you contribute something, the sooner others can help with the polishing, and you no longer have to maintain the customization against the evolving core DSpace platform, since it will be part of the platform!

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  • DSpace GitHub - GitHub allows for collaborative & social code development! You can create your own GitHub account (it's free) to get started, and then "fork" our repository to start creating your own modifications (which can be submitted back to us via a GitHub "Pull Request"). For much more information see Development with Git.
  • Issue TrackerThe Feature/Issue Tracking System (JIRA) (uses same login as Wiki)
    • bug reports
    • feature requestspatches
    • add your vote to existing issues, or add your own comments
    • "watch" existing issues (you will receive an email any time a new comment is added or the issue status is updated)
    • volunteer to work on a feature/issue (just add a comment to that issue)

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You should submit your idea or feature request to our Issue Tracking System (JIRA) (uses the same login as the Wiki)GitHub). However, before going through the process of submitting your ideas, it's always best to search the Issue Tracker to see if others have already requested this feature. If someone else has requested this feature, you can add your ideas as "comments", or "vote" for that feature to be added/implemented.

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  • If you have a local developer who has time to work on this feature, let us know when you submit the issue (or add a comment later). If a local developer can already work on the issue/feature request, we may just need to approve the code (see Code Contribution Guidelines, for details on our DSpace Code Approval/Acceptance processes).
  • If you know of other institutions with similar needs, tell them to "vote" for your issue request in the Issue Tracker, or add their own use cases/support as comments. Also, if any of them have a developer with time to develop the feature, let us know!
  • If you are not sure if other institutions may have this need, you can promote your issue by sending an email to 'dspace-community' or 'dspace-tech' mailing lists, asking for others' feedback. Hopefully, others can add comments/suggestions or even point us in the direction of an interested volunteer developer.
  • Even if we cannot find an interested developer in the community, the DSpace Committers will review your request and see if one or more Committers have time to devote towards the work. In some cases, a Committer may be able to convince their institution of the importance of the new feature (again, sample use cases are helpful to convince institutions of a feature's importance).

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If your request is formally accepted into DSpace, you'll receive an email as soon as we "Close" or "Resolve" the request in our Issue Tracker. At that point in time, the Issue Tracker will also be updated to state which version of DSpace this new feature will be released in.

Once that version of DSpace is released, your name (and a link back to your initial feature request) will appear in our Version History section of our DSpace Documentation. You will also be added to our list of all known DSpaceContributors. This is our way of ensuring you receive recognition for your contributions to DSpace!

How To Contribute Code or Development How To Contribute Code or Development Time

Where to Obtain the Source Code

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More information on using DSpace + GitHub is at: Development with Git

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Do you have a developer (or two) with some extra time? Are you looking for ways that you can help the community and improve your local DSpace?

Please take a look at our issues lists

Please, take a look at our current listing of 'unassigned' New Feature requests or DSpace Improvements "good first issue" tickets. Any help you can provide would be much appreciated!

(If none are currently listed, as on Slack or via email and we'll find a smaller ticket for you to start with) 

But, before you But, before you get started, please make sure to do the following:

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Most of all: Thanks! The more individuals/institutions can give back to DSpace, the better the software is for everyone!

Submitting Code Changes

See Code Contribution Guidelines for guidelines that all submissions must adhere to. That page also describes the general process for how a patch/contribution gets accepted into DSpace. The mechanics of creating a patch file are described in Developer Guidelines and Tools.

Copyright and Licensing of Code Contributions

In the words of the PostgreSQL Global Development Group, which also uses the BSD license, "The simplest explanation of the licensing terms is that you can do whatever you want with the product and source code as long as you don't claim you wrote it or sue us." The BSD License under which DSpace is made available does not require you to make your changes public or open-source. It does allow for proprietary commercial use, and for DSpace-derived creations to be incorporated into proprietary commercial products. Works based on DSpace may even be released under a proprietary license (but still must maintain the license requirements).

You are encouraged, but not obligated, to share your contributions with the DSpace community. If you choose to do so, you will need to sign over copyright and intellectual property rights of your code to DuraSpace, to be distributed via the BSD license. DuraSpace is a 501c(3) non-profit established to be the legal guardian of the code and to remain mission centric on providing free and open source software for management and archiving of digital works. Also, your code cannot rely on any non-BSD compatibly licensed code.

The BSD license means there is no advantage to be gained by your university (or anyone) retaining copyright, and that by having different copyright holders of different sections of the code, we will be rendered inflexible regarding copyright and licensing in the future, we do ask that you transfer copyright of your modifications to DuraSpace.

You will receive full acknowledgment for contributing the code; so we do encourage you to incorporate your enhancements to DSpace's functionality for everyone to benefit. You will also see benefits since you will neither have to re-incorporate the changes with new versions of DSpace, nor maintain this code solely yourself!

back to DSpace, the better the software is for everyone!

Submitting Code Changes

See Code Contribution Guidelines for guidelines that all submissions must adhere to. That page also describes the general process for how a patch/contribution gets accepted into DSpace. The mechanics of creating a patch file are described in Developer Guidelines and Tools.

How to test DSpace Github Pull Requests (PR)

See Testing DSpace Github Pull RequestsIf your code contribution uses third-party products/tools, you should also double-check that they use a compatible open source license. Compatible licenses are listed at: Licensing of Contributions section of the Code Contribution Guidelines page.