Getting Involved with the Community

As an Eclipse user or developer, your first (and best) way to get involved with the community is to use the Eclipse IDE for your development and explore what the many Eclipse projects have to offer you. Let your interest areas guide you towards the projects that you find most interesting.

Don't wait too long to get directly involved with the community. Here are some suggestions on ways to participate. Feel free to add your own ideas to the list.

Communicate

• Ask questions in the newcomer forum. The forum is monitored by seasoned Eclipse users and developers who are happy to answer your questions.
  • Be sure to read "How To Ask Questions The Smart Way" by Eric Raymond and Rick Moen before you post.
  • Well formed questions tend to be answered while poorly worded ones are not.

• Contribute to conversations occurring within the Eclipse community (primarily between developers) by adding yourself to one or more mailing lists. Each project has its own mailing list and there are some lists (like cross-project-issues-dev) that span projects and provide a good source of information concerning the integration of various projects.

• Use IRC channels related to Eclipse to discuss Eclipse-related technologies, chat with the developers of Eclipse and ask questions.

• Participate in Eclipse's social media groups:
  • Facebook
  • LinkedIn
  • Twitter #eclipse
  • Xing

• Give your opinions and share advice by adding your Eclipse-related blog to Planet Eclipse.

• Tell people about the Eclipse solutions you like best by favourite-ing them and posting reviews on Eclipse Marketplace.

Suggest Improvements

• File bugs, request new features and pose questions through Bugzilla.
  • Be sure to read How to Report Bugs Effectively by Simon Tatham.
  • If you want to keep informed about the progress of bugs through the system, you can register (by configuring "User Watching" in the Email Settings) to be notified when a bug is created or modified. This is a great way to be a "fly on the wall" as bugs are worked through the system. You can learn about the process while you learn about Eclipse just by watching these notes.

Create

• Create resources on Eclipse like demos, podcasts, videos or webinars and post them to Eclipse Live. Also, rate and comment on the resources others have posted.

• Start your own project on Eclipse Labs.

• Eclipse Projects always need help with documentation. Once you're familiar enough with a project, contribute pages to the Eclipse wiki.

• It's great when people help by reporting bugs, but it's even better when they create patches to fix them! You can submit your fix via Bugzilla.

Evangelize

• If you are a university or college student, become an Eclipse Campus Ambassador.

• Sign up for a local IT event in your area and give a presentation on Eclipse.

• Tell your friends about Eclipse and help us spread the word!

Miscellaneous

• Attend Eclipse events and connect with the community

• Become a Friend of Eclipse by donating financially. Donations are used to provide services for the Eclipse community, like providing more bandwidth for users and committers, purchasing additional servers to host Eclipse projects, sending students to EclipseCon and sponsoring Eclipse community events.

• Help translate Eclipse into other languages through the Babel project. You may also want to join a Regional Eclipse Community group where you can connect with others in your local area.