Contributing to PASS

Getting Involved

Whether you are interested in simply improving the existing code base, or maybe even thinking about forking the project for use at your institution, it's a good idea to have a look at a running test instance and exercise the workflows. The easiest way to do this is to simply visit our demo instance.

Reporting a Bug

If you've run across a bug in the Eclipse PASS application, letting us know about it is an important and an easy way to contribute. First, check to see if there's an existing issue for what you're observing by performing a search in the issues list. If you've discovered a new bug, create a new issue to tell us about it. You will need to create a GitHub account to do this, if you don't have one already.

When creating an issue, please provide a concise description of the potential problem, the steps needed to reproduce it, and a description of how the behavior differs from what you need or expect. Also, provide details about your environment like OS, Java version, and Maven version, etc.

Contributing Code or Documentation

There is always a need for fixing bugs and we are continually looking to add new features. Contributions furthering these efforts are always welcome. It may be that you simply notice something that doesn't seem to work quite right. You can check the GitHub issues to see if an issue has already been opened. If an issue was already opened, you may also comment on the issue if you have new information which might be helpful. If there is no existing issue, you might consider creating one (see above). The same process holds for exploring the addition of a new feature or updating documentation.

To contribute to the code base, you will need an account on GitHub. Further, since PASS is an Eclipse Foundation project, contributors will need to create an Eclipse account and sign a contributor agreement. To keep things simple, the email address you use to sign up for the Eclipse account should be the same as the one you use for your GitHub account.

To make changes to code or documentation, you'll start by forking the GitHub repository you'd like to change into your own GitHub account. Once you have your own copy of the repository, create a Git branch for your work. Please name the branch based on the ID of the ticket associated with the issue, for example: 903-fix-bug-in-code. You'll then be able to make changes, perform Git commits, and push those changes to your copy of the repository. Once your work is done, you'll need to create a Pull Request to let us know about your changes. You'll find a more complete overview of this process here.

More Info

More documentation about the PASS project can be found in the Developer Documentation and the PASS Infrastructure sections of this documentation repository. General information about contributing to Eclipse projects can be found in the Eclipse handbook.