EASE/Contributor Guide

EASE Contributor Guide

Contribution to an open source project is not only about coding. There are multiple other ways to help this project, which we will describe below.

Source Contributions

Basic Setup

• Create an Eclipse account if you do not have one yet
• Sign the CLA
• Find your Gerrit password

We receive conrtibutions via Gerrit. If you know how to setup Gerrit, you may skip the next section.

How to checkout with Gerrit

• make sure you have installed following components (or directly get Eclipse for RCP and RAP Developers):

* Eclipse Git Team Provider
* Mylyn Reviews Connector: Gerrit
* Mylyn Versions Connector: Git

• Open the Git Repositories view
• "Clone from repo"
• Select Gerrit
• "Add a new repository"
• screenshot
• select the appropriate repo
• clone
• import all projects

For detailed instructions on how to contribute with gerrit, please read this excellent tutorial from Lars Vogel.

Script Contributions

To consume/provide sample scripts use org.eclipse.ease.scripts. To test your scripts you need EASE to be installed in your running IDE.

Module Contributions

To provide new script modules use org.eclipse.ease.modules. You need the EASE core components to be part of your target platform.

Core Framework Contributions

Work on the core framework, UI integration and script interpreters.

• check out org.eclipse.ease.core.
• set the target platform located at: org.eclipse.ease.releng.target/org.eclipse.ease.releng.target.target.

Coding Rules

Before you commit changes please load our code formatter template: Preferences/Java/Code Style/Formatter, click import and load the file developers/formatter.xml.

Bug Reports

Creating bug reports and feature requests is a valuable contribution to the project. Please be as precise as possible when describing your problem. When facing exceptions a stacktrace is a valuable piece of information. Starting eclipse with the -console command line parameter might reveal such information.

File your bugs under technology/EASE.

Help newcomers

Answering questions on the forums, mailing list and on stackoverflow encourage new users to work with EASE and eventually become contributors in the future. Be polite and help out wherever you can. Do not rely on committers to answer every question. Even if we try, we want to encourage our users to help each other.

Create UIs/Graphics

UI and icon design are important to attract users. Bad visuals might repel users without even exploring the great things you could do with EASE. We host a special EASE UI Design project for icon ideas, templates and UI mockups. For mockups we prefer Wireframe Sketcher, but accept any other freely consumable format, too.

Promotion

Blog, write, chat about EASE and spread the word. Attracting new users and developers is crucial to build up a living community.