Life in Apache Software Foundation
- 1. Life In Apache Software Foundation (ASF) Ashish Singhi Apache HBase Committer & PMC Member Senior Software Engineer at Walmart Labs Date: 21st Nov 2019
- 2. The Apache Software Foundation • What is ASF - non-profit public charity organization incorporated in USA • How it started - A bit of history (https://www.apache.org/foundation/how-it-works.html#history) • How many project it includes - 276! (https://projects.apache.org/projects.html?name) • How it makes money - It does not "make money" per se, it just has to cover its costs. It accepts corporate sponsorship donations, regular donations and through conferences. List of sponsors - https://www.apache.org/foundation/thanks
- 3. ASF Roles • User - uses software, feedback • Developer/Contributor - participate in discussions, provide patches, documentation, suggestions • Committer - a developer with right access on the code repo, apache.org mail address • PMC Member - right to vote for the community-related decisions, proposes and elects a contributor as a committer, controls the project • PMC Chair - One among PMC, leads the project, interface between the board and the project • ASF Member – Propose a committer or a PMC for membership, can stand for the board election, right to propose a new project for incubation https://www.apache.org/foundation/how-it-works.html#roles
- 4. Newcomers to ASF • Where do they start - • Finding the right project • By language: https://projects.apache.org/projects.html?language • By Category: https://projects.apache.org/projects.html?category • Subscribing to project mailing list • Example for Kafka: https://kafka.apache.org/contact • Jira to work upon • Filter for labels: beginners, newbie… • How should they behave - • Respect time and culture of others • Be constructive, friendly, polite and patient • Writing good emails (http://www.apache.org/dev/contrib-email-tips)
- 5. Contributor: Things to know • How to report an issue ? • How to request for a feature ? • How to assign yourself a Jira which is assigned to someone else ? • How to submit code change ? • Few Coding standards to follow: • Unit test – At least one unit test case for the Jira • Functional and Integration test if possible • Static tools – Findbugs, Checkstyle, Coverity, ThreadSafe • Format only the modified code • Take review comments positively, have an open mind • If you get no feedback on the patch, wait and repeat your question in 3-4 days • Provide review comments in the form of a question, even if you’re quite sure that you’re right
- 6. How to become a Committer • Ability to work co-operatively with peers - Evaluated by the interactions they have through mail, how they respond to criticism, how they participate in decision-making process • Commitment - Evaluated by time, sticking through tough issues, helping on not-so-fun tasks as well • Personal skill/ability - A solid general understanding of the project, quality of discussion in mail, patches (where applicable) easy to apply with only a cursory review • Community - Evaluated by the interactions through mail, reviewing others patches • Non binding votes on code modifications
- 7. Voting in ASF • Votes are represented as numbers between -1 and +1, with ‘-1’ meaning ‘no’ and ‘+1’ meaning ‘yes.’ • The in-between values are indicative of how strongly the voting individual feels. http://www.apache.org/foundation/voting.html#expressing-votes-1- 0-1-and-fractions • Bug : At least one binding ‘+1’ is required with no ‘-1’ vote • Major feature: At least two/three binding ‘+1’ is required (depends on project) with no ‘-1’ vote • Committer: At least 3 binding ‘+1’ vote is required with no ‘-1’ note
- 8. Project Versioning • Versions are denoted using a standard triplet of integers: MAJOR.MINOR.PATCH • MAJOR versions are incompatible. • MINOR versions retain source and binary compatibility with older minor versions. • PATCH level are perfectly compatible, forwards and backwards. Original Version New Version Compatible? 2.2.3 2.2.4 Yes Compatibility across patch versions is guaranteed. 2.2.3 2.2.1 Yes Compatibility across patch versions is guaranteed. 2.2.3 2.3.1 Yes Compatibility with later minor versions is guaranteed. 2.2.3 2.1.7 No Compatibility with prior minor versions is not guaranteed. 2.2.3 3.0.0 No Compatibility with different major versions is not guaranteed. 2.2.3 1.4.7 No Compatibility with different major versions is not guaranteed. https://apr.apache.org/versioning.html
- 9. Responsibilities of a Committer • Binding votes on code modifications • Applying patches - discuss, review and apply patches submitted by others • Helping users - respond to questions from users and devs on the mailing list • Monitoring commits and issues - review commit email messages, Monitoring Jira for bugs or enhancement requests • Helping out with the web site – Maintain the project web site • Mentoring new comers. • Non binding Votes on project release cuts. https://www.apache.org/dev/committers.html#committer-responsibilities
- 10. Responsibilities of a PMC • Binding votes every where. • Comply with legal affairs policies • Comply with brand management policies • Responsibly report misuses of apache brands • Conduct project business on public mailing lists • Limit project business on private mailing lists