HOWTO Contribute to Heartbeat

Heartbeat is free software. It's both free as in liberty (libre) and free as in "free beer" (gratis).

And it's a community development, with lots and lots of opportunties to contribute to the project - more than anyone knows.

If you appreciate Heartbeat[1], then contributing back to the project is one of the best ways to show that appreciation.

You can contribute to heartbeat - and the community will be poorer for it if you don't.

Here are a few more common ways to contribute to the project:

• Spread the Word - tell others about Heartbeat[1]

  • Write up a few paragraphs about how you use Heartbeat[1] and add to the SuccessStories[2] page

  • Give a talk at your LUG or other local user group - and put your talk on the Talks[3] page

  • Give a talk at a conference on Heartbeat[1] - and put your talk on the Talks[3] page

  • Write an article for a magazine or online e-zine about Heartbeat[1]

  • Add articles you saw or wrote that to the PressRoom[4]

  • Sell it to your customers

  • Sell Support[5] for it.

  • Become our project PublicityCzar[6] - and make heartbeat more visible. Help us grow our customers and contributors.

• Provide feedback

  • provide input on features for the FeatureWishList[7]

  • write good bug reports for Bugzilla[8]

  • suggest missing documentation

• Help other users

  • ask questions on the mailing lists
  • answer questions on the mailing lists
  • answer questions on the IRC channel

• Translations

  • Web site
  • GUI

  • OCF Resource Agent[9] metadata

  • STONITH[10] Agents

• Update[11] the web site - bring light out of darkness, and organization out of chaos

  • Procedure for updating the web site[11].

  • Fix what needs fixing - little or big

    • Find things that are R1 only (start with the ha.cf[12] page) and mark them as R1 only, and vice versa.

    • etc.

  • Add to the FAQ[13]

  • Merge the two FAQs.

  • Add to the HowToContribute page (this page!)

    • Steal from others - like Firefox[14].

  • Help organize the reference documentation
  • Review, add to, and correct the reference documentation

    • Figure out what's missing from the DTD annotations[15] and add it

    • Add to the CIB idioms[16] collection

    • etc.

  • Help with the Education project[17] - Making Heartbeat the best documented OSS project

    • Help create modules for the Education[17] project

    • Add to the list of things you think people should know how to do
    • Suggest an rational order for learning these things

    • Translate the Education[17] modules to other languages

    • Help us create certification tests for the various levels in the Education[17] project

  • Update and improve the PHP scripts that manage this web site (become our webmaster/mistress)
  • Update and improve the CSS for the web site

• Test!!

  • Compile the Hg[18] tip nightly on your favorite platform and run BasicSanityCheck[19] on it

  • Help us run CTS[20] as we get close to release times

  • Test portions you have hardware to test with (e.g., STONITH[10] modules).

• Port heartbeat to other platforms

• Write code

  • provide code patches and ContactUs[21], e.g. on the development mailing list

  • fix Bugzillas

  • pick things from the FeatureWishList[7] and implement them

  • learn a subsystem - CCM, Stonithd, etc., ask questions, and post improvements to the -dev list.

• Support the developers

  • Buy products and services from companies who contribute to heartbeat:
    • IBM, Novell, Tummy.com, etc.

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This information provided courtesy of the Linux-HA project at http://linux-ha.org/