Savannah documentation/
HowToBecomeASavannahHacker
Contributing to Savannah
We need volunteers and look forward to your participation. This page
is about becoming a Savannah hacker (e.g., a Savannah website
administrator) and helping Savannah.
Examples of tasks done by Savannah volunteers:
(一)Evaluate and approve non-gnu packages submitted for hosting.
(二)Help Savannah users, whether with questions or support issues.
(三)Administer the Savannah servers and services.
(四)Improve the Savannah web frontend code.
(五)Improve this wiki.
(六)Develop new features for the Savannah environment.
A good starting point is helping with package evaluation (see below).
Some tasks require administrator-level access to the website and the
servers (see ShellAccess). Others can be done by anyone willing to
help.
You can send your contributions to savannah-hackers-public@gnu.org.
Please also include a bit about your background with free software,
GNU, Savannah, or whatever else may be relevant. And your Savannah
account name.
When accepted, you will be made an administrator of the administration
group, which will enable the "Become Superuser" option in the
left-hand menu. Then you can approve new packages for hosting and
do many other things through the web interface. Please explore.
Communication
For communication with other Savannah folks, see
SavannahHackersCommunication, which includes info on mailing lists
you should subscribe to and use.
Read the CodeOfConduct to understand how to communicate with our
users with politeness.
Package evaluation and approval
To be hosted on Savannah, software must comply with our hosting
requirements.
Savannah volunteers evalute only non-gnu groups (gnu packages are
evaluated by the gnu evalution team).
You can help with package evaluation before becoming a Savannah
administrator; indeed, we recommend doing this as a first step for
anyone who wants to help Savannah.
Read HowToGetYourProjectApprovedQuickly, which explains in detail
what a submitter should check, but also serves as a guide for Savannah
hackers reviewing the package. See also Mario's guide for reviewing
software.
You can also read past submissions (and responses) on the
Savannah-Register-Public
mailing list.
Pick a pending unassigned task in administration task list:
https://savannah.gnu.org/task/?group=administration
Read it, then write the answer that you would make as the Savannah
reviewer.
When your answer is ready, send it (with a link to the task) at
savannah-hackers-public@gnu.org
and one of the current Savannah hackers will answer as quickly as
possible.
Helping Savannah users
See the
Savannah Support Tracker
and the
Savannah-users mailing list
for examples of user questions and requests. Many of these items require
administrator access to Savannah servers, but some are general usage
questions, and others deal with bugs in the website frontend code - those
can be handled locally (see 'working on Savannah website' below).
Working on Savannah internals
The above is about helping as a Savannah administrator via the web
interface. If you are willing and able to hack on the Savannah (Savane)
implementation itself, at the shell/sysadmin level, please essentially
do the same as the above with one of the open support
requests.
The active source code is in the "administration" group (using several
of the VC systems). SavaneRewrite has a bit more history.
When accepted, some info about getting in at the shell level is at
ShellAccess.
For general information, read the SavannahServices,
SavannahInternals, UserAuthentication, GnuArchitecture pages.
Working on the Savannah website
The Savannah website http://savannah.gnu.org is written mostly in PHP
with a MySQL database backend and some Perl scripts. An overview is
available at SavannahInternals. The PHP code (with a stub database)
can be run and developed locally, without administrator access. see
RunningSavaneLocally.
You are encouraged to hack on the frontend code! Either adding new features,
improving the code, or fixing bugs. See open support
requests.
Please be aware that the code base is quite old and delicate: before starting
to work on a new feature, be sure to discuss it at
savannah-hackers-public@gnu.org.
Improving this Wiki
The Savannah wiki pages can always be improved. You can help without
being a Savannah administrator. See 'Running this wiki locally' section
at HowToAdminThisWiki. Add your improvements, and send a patch to
savannah-hackers-public@gnu.org.
The list of all pages is on the FrontPage.
Suggestions for wiki improvements:
(一)Running parts of Savannah locally
(e.g., RunningSavaneLocally) - testing, verifying and improving
the instructions.
FrontEnd documentation - (e.g., SavannahInternals) - improving and
expanding this page, or creating a new page focused on the PHP code.
DebBugs documentation - The GNU DebBugs server http://debbugs.gnu.org
uses a customized version of DebBugs.
It would be very beneficial to document the installation, configuration,
and perhaps even instructions on how to setup such a server locally.
Gathering this information will require not only tinkering with the
debbugs source code but also
soliciting help and advice from other volunteers. Be sure to be polite
and patient with them. See
https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/help-debbugs/2015-01/msg00003.html.
Developing new features
New features are welcome! Do send ideas (and patches) to
savannah-hackers-public@gnu.org.
See SavannahHackingIdeas for possible starting points.
Links:
FrontPage
ProjectApproval
SavannahHackingIdeas
back-page
Last edited Thu Jul 27 04:23:01 2023