Revision as of 12:07, 2 February 2015

Work in progress. Until we say otherwise, assume that everything you read here is a lie. Except for all the stuff about how easy Oomph makes it to provision a development environment; that stuff is dead on.

Great Fixes for Mars is a skills competition. Flex your Eclipse development skills in exchange for prizes!

A Great Fix is a contribution provides a significant improvement in the Java development experience using Eclipse. Special consideration will be given to performance or stability improvements, and patches that improve the user experience.

Who Can participate?

To qualify, you must be a contributor who is not a committer on the project that accepts the contribution. So, you can be an Eclipse committer on a different Eclipse project and qualify. Contributors must sign the Eclipse Foundation's Contributor License Agreement (CLA).

A Great Fix must be fixed by the contributor on their own qualifications (i.e. if your starting point is "I want to fix bug xyz, but don't know much about the code. Please explain how I should start", then--respectfully--this isn't for you).

Contributors can enter more than once.

Void where prohibited by law.

Evaluation

To qualify for consideration as a Great Fix, a contribution:

• must be submitted by a non-committer; and
• be accepted by a project committer and merged into the corresponding source code repository.

Qualifying submissions will be judged on three criteria: points will be assigned based on knowledge of the contributor, type of fix, and impact to the community.

Contributor knowledge (1-5 points):

• Committer accepts contribution without modification (5)
• Minor changes required (3)
• Structural changes required (1)

Type of fix (1-5 points):

• Performance (5)
• Stability (4)
• Direct user experience (3)
• Indirect user experience (2)
• Other (1)

Impact on the community (1-5) as determined by the committer.

Prizes

• Winners will receive an Android tablet (details pending); and
• Other contributors that submit a qualifying fix receive an Eclipse t-shirt (one per contributor).

Timing

The programme runs in cycles; submissions must be accepted by a project committer before 900h ET on the specified deadline date. We'll announce the winners at the end of each cycle.

1. Deadline: March 10/2015; the three top-prize winners will be announced on March 12 at EclipseCon
2. Deadline: April 1/2015; the three top-prize winners will be announced on April 3/2015 M6
3. Deadline: May 6/2015; the four top-prize winners will be announced on May 8/2015 M7

Where do I start?

At the beginning of each cycle, we will select candidate bugs to seed the discussion. Contributors can select from these bugs, or from the larger pool of bugs.

Step One: Pick a bug

Here are some good places to look for candidates:

• Selected candidates (pending);
• Bug 1..100 from Eclipse Platform 4.5 Planning Bugs
• "Bug Day" bugs for the Platform, JDT, and PDE;
• "Help Wanted" bugs for the Web Tools "Common", EJB Tools, Java EE Tools, and Source Editing;

When you've selected a bug:

• Take ownership of the bug (assign the bug to yourself)
• Add the "greatfix" keyword to the bug; and
• Add a comment with the date you intend to submit the patch.

A committer will +1 your comment, indicating their willingness to review your contribution when it is submitted.

Step Two: Sort out how to contribute

All projects provide a contribution guide that can help you know what you need to do to ensure that your contribution is accepted.

• How to Contribute to the Platform UI Project
• You should find a contribution guide in the root of the Git repository

Use the Oomph Eclipse Installer to build your development environment and provision your workspace with the exact source code and workbench configuration you need to get started immediately.

Step Three: Connect with the team

• Discuss the bug via comments on the bug report

Step Four: Contribute!

Push your fixes to the project's Gerrit repository.

Step Five: Reap the Rewards

Bask in the glory.