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BugDay/FAQ
Contents
General Questions
Q: What is Eclipse bug day?
A: Eclipse bug day is simply one day a month when Eclipse committers are dedicated to foster Eclipse community outreach.
Q: Who came up with Eclipse bug day?
A: The concept of a bug day isn't really new. Chris Aniszczyk started the bug day idea within the Eclipse community. Chris and the people in #eclipse-dev on IRC really deserve the credit for getting things started.
For Developers (non-committers)
Q: What skills do I need to participate in Eclipse bug day?
A: If you have the code foo so to speak, you can pick through bugs that have been specially selected for Eclipse bug day (they have the special flag of bugday) and assign it to yourself on the wiki page. Once this is done, you claim the bug for yourself and can ask help from the developer via the bug or talk to them directly on IRC.
Q: What's in it for me?
A: There are a couple things. First, if you contribute a patch that gets included in a release, you will be listed in the contribution log of the project. This means that YOUR code will be included in the next release of the project (along with proper attribution of course!). Furthermore, you get to build relations with the committers of the project you're donating your time to. Besides you also get the feel good feeling of contributing to open-source, right :)?
Q: Ok, I'm convinced, how do I participate?
A: The first step is to find bugs that you're interested in doing for bug day. These bugs are marked with the keyword bugday and are conveniently linked from a respective bugday page (find one on the main bugday page). Once you have bugs you're interested in, (a) let the person in the bug know by commenting in it, and more importantly (if you're a developer), (b) post your name and bugs you will be doing for bug day in the designated area (see picture below).
Once that's done, go to IRC (#eclipse-bugs) on the day of bugday and get help from other people there.
For Users (non-developers)
Q: What skills do I need to participate in Eclipse bug day?
A: There's plenty of opportunity to participate if you're not a developer! There are Eclipse bugs out there that need help with triage (see the question below) or if you're good with artwork, there's bugs out there that need help with art!
Q: How do I triage bugs?
A: Programming skills might help you fix particular bugs, but triaging most bugs will not require any programming knowledge. Bug triaging is a great way for people who do not know anything about programming to return something to the Eclipse community. To get started with triaging a bug, simply go to the Eclipse bug day page: (1) find the current bug day, (2) find a component your interested in triaging and click the triage link, (3) go through the bugs and see if there is anything missing in a bug or the bug may be out of date.
Q: What software is needed in order to assist in triaging bugs?
A: A web browser (like Firefox) and the latest stable version of Eclipse should suffice (note that some bugs may be tied to specific Eclipse versions, but those can be considered more advanced).
For Committers
Q: Why should I participate in bug day?
A: I assume as an over-worked Eclipse committer with little free-time, bugs tend to languish in the inbox without some coordinated effort to keep up with them. Bug days help keep bug-fixing on the radar and provide a great lightweight opportunity for contributors to help. Also, the community is given an opportunity to get to know committers via triage and bug fixing!
Q: How can I participate in bug day?
A: Make sure to keyword bugs (bugday) you think are reasonable for new contributors.
Also, make sure to update the respective wiki page for the current bug day if your'e participating.
On actual bug days, please hang out on IRC (specifically #eclipse-bugs) to help contributors! If you don't want to, that's ok, it's still possible to work with contributors via bug reports.
Q: I'm a committer, but I don't have any bugs to give, can I still participate?
A: Sure! It's possible to help new contributors and users on IRC (#eclipse-bugs). While you're at it, don't forget to idle in #eclipse and #eclipse-dev :)
Q: Oh my, someone contributed something! How do I properly document it?
A: It's important to respect the Eclipse IP process and it's really important to respect to contributor's work. Here is the recommend way to handle contributions:
1) Make sure the bug is assigned to the contributor and that the bug is keyworded 'contributed'
2) Make sure that the copyrights on all relevant files touched contain the contributor's name, contact info and bug number.
3) Update your project's IP log with this information.
That should keep the Eclipse IP people happy and also make it easy to search for who contributed what to your project.