Dear Shiraaz,
Thank you for your interest in the IPT and willingness to contribute. It would be fantastic to have external contributions.
Like many open source projects, the way in which we would like to operate is to have contributors submit a patch, which would be reviewed by a committer. Following some successful patches, the contributer would be welcomed as a committer. As a fairly immature project, we don't yet have a large pool of contributers, so it is an exciting time to get involved early.
The IPT is very lacking in unit test coverage as you mention and is highlighted in sonar[1]. Increasing the unit test coverage would be a good way to really help improve the project, and learn the code structure.
We have just set up a review system[2] as well, which allows easier review of patches. I would recommend offering a patch there and we can review it.
Does this help to get started?
Many thanks again for your interest,
Tim
[1] http://sonar.gbif.org/dashboard/index/1498
[2] http://reviews.gbif.org
On Jul 12, 2011, at 2:14 PM, Shiraaz Moollatjie wrote:
Hi,
I am totally new to the open source development world and I noticed the gbif-providertoolkit which seems interesting to me. Since I am totally new to this (and probably breaking all sorts of etiquette involved, my apologies if I am :) ) I was wondering what I can do to get started on the project? My guess is that since I did not prove myself as a developer yet, I was hoping to maybe add some unit tests or do some documentation tasks for the project?
My apologies again if I am taking the wrong approach here. Hopefully you will give me some direction :).
Kindest Regards,
Shiraaz