Contributor's Guide

Looking to contribute something to the ADF XML DataControl? Here's how you can help.

Please take a moment to review this document in order to make the contribution process easy and effective for everyone involved.

Following these guidelines helps to communicate that you respect the time of the developers managing and developing this open source project. In return, they should reciprocate that respect in addressing your issue or assessing patches and features.

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Using the issue tracker

The JIRA issue tracker is the preferred channel for bug reports and feature requests, but please respect the following restrictions:

  • Please do not use the issue tracker for personal support requests. These should be asked in the Question section of our wiki.
  • Please do not detail or troll issues. Keep the discussion on topic and respect the opinions of others.

Bug reports

A bug is a demonstrable problem that is caused by the code in the repository. Good bug reports are extremely helpful, so thank!

Guidelines for bug reports:

  1. Use our JIRA issue tracker - check if the issue has already been reported and perhaps add more details to that existing issue.
  2. Check if the issue has been fixed - try to reproduce it using the latest version. As our time is limited, we only fix issues in the latest versions and will not supply hotfixes for older versions.
  3. Isolate the problem - ideally create a reduced test case and attach that to the issue or make it available for public download. If possible, reproduce the issue with the ResourceDataProvider so the project can run without any dependency. If that's not possible try to use the WSDataProvider to reproduce with our public sample web service that's also used in the Getting Started in 5 Minutes guide.

A good bug report shouldn't leave others needing to chase you up for more information. Please try to be as detailed as possible in your report. What is your environment? What steps will reproduce the issue? What JDeveloper/ADF versions experience the problem? What would you expect to be the outcome? All these details will help people to fix any potential bugs.

Example:

Short and descriptive example bug report title

A summary of the issue and the JDeveloper/ADF version in which it occurs. If suitable, include the steps required to reproduce the bug.

  1. This is the first step
  2. This is the second step
  3. Further steps, etc.

<url> - a link to the reduced test case (or attach it to the issue as a ZIP file)

Any other information you want to share that is relevant to the issue being reported. This might include the lines of code that you have identified as causing the bug, and potential solutions (and your opinions on their merits).

Feature requests

Feature requests are very welcome. But take a moment to find out whether your idea fits with the scope and aim of the project. It's up to you to make a strong case to convince the project's developers of the merits of this feature. Please provide as much detail an context as possible and make sure the request benefits multiple users and is not very specific to your situation with little chance of reuse by others.

Pull requests

Good pull requests - patches, improvements, and new features - are a fantastic help. They should remain focused in scope and avoid containing unrelated commits.

Please ask first before embarking on any significant pull request (e.g. implementing features, refactoring code, porting to a different ADF version), otherwise you risk spending a lot of time working on something that the project's developers might nog want to merge into the project.

Please adhere to the coding guidelines used throughout the project (indentation, accurate comments, etc.) and any other requirements.

Adhering to the following process is the best way to get your work included in the project:

  1. Fork the project to your own Bitbucket repository. This can be done with the web based Bitbucket UI.
  2. Clone your fork so you have a local repository on your workstation. You can easily do this from the Bitbucket Web UI and select to Clone in SourceTree (a great Git Windows or Mac client from Atlassian). Or you can use the command line:

    git clone https://bitbucket.org/<your-username>/xml-datacontrol.git
  3. Assign the original https://bitbucket.org/adfxmldc/xml-datacontrol.git repository to a remote called upstream in your clone. In SourceTree you can use Add Remote from the Repository menu. Or you can use the command line:

    cd xml-datacontrol
    git remote add upstream https://bitbucket.org/adfxmldc/xml-datacontrol.git
  4. If you cloned a while ago, get the latest changes from upstream to ensure you merge all the changes that were made in our central repository. Getting all changes from your own bitbucket repository is done with checkout as your clone is based on that. Fetching all the changes from the project's central repository is a normal pull of the master branch of the upstream remote. These can be done from the SourceTree UI as well or from the command line:

    # get all changes from your own bitbucket repository
    git checkout master
    # get all changes from our central repository
    git pull upstream master
  5. Create a new topic branch (off the main project development branch) to contain your feature, change, or fix:

    git checkout -b <topic-branch-name>
  6. Commit your changes in logical chunks. Please adhere to these git commit message guidelines or your code is unlikely to be merged into the main project. Use Git's interactive rebase feature to tidy up your commits before making them public. Try to squash you changes in as little logical commits as possible, preferably one. 
  7. Locally merge (or rebase) the upstream development branch into your topic branch to ensure you incorporate the latest code from the main project:

    git pull [--rebase] upstream master
  8. Push your topic branch up to your fork:

    git push origin <topic-branch-name>
  9. Open a pull request with a clear title and description against our master branch. If this request is associated to an open bug report or feature request, please include the JIRA issue key.

By submitting a patch, you agree to allow the project owners to license your work under the terms of the Apache License, Version 2.0

Code Guidelines

All code that is specific to JDeveloper 12c as well as the code that is shared between JDeveloper 11g and 12c should be formatted with the default JDeveloper 12c Code Style.

Only the code that is specific to ADF 11g should be formatted with the default JDeveloper 11g Code Style.

License

By contributing your code, you agree to license your contribution under the Apache License, Version 2.0