Firstly, thanks for your interest in contributing! I hope that this will be a pleasant experience for you, and that you will return to continue contributing.
Please visit our Get Involved page for more information on how to contribute.
This project and everyone participating in it are governed by the Apache software Foundation's Code of Conduct. By participating, you are expected to adhere to this code. If you are aware of unacceptable behavior, please visit the Reporting Guidelines page and follow the instructions there.
Most of the contributions that we receive are code contributions, but you can also contribute to the documentation, wiki, etc., or simply report solid bugs for us to fix.
Please review our guide on how to submit a bug report. This page also has links to other resources to assist you.
Apache Tomcat project uses POEditor for managing the localization files. Please see more at https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/x/vIPzBQ
Unsure where to begin contributing to Tomcat? You can start by taking a look at the issues marked ‘Beginner’, link below. Please note that the Beginner keyword is pretty new to the project, so if there aren't any issues in the filter feel free to ask on the dev list.
The list above shows all bugs that are marked ‘Beginner’ and are open in the currently supported Tomcat versions (7, 8.5, and 9).
If you prefer C over Java, you may also take a look at the tomcat-native and Tomcat Connectors products in Bugzilla.
Excited yet? This section will guide you through providing a patch to the committers of the project for review and acceptance.
You can provide a patch in one of the following ways (in order of preference):
Now that you've chosen how you want to submit a patch, you need to get the source code.
This method works if you want to submit a patch via email, but the difference in using the sources distribution and a VCS is that you have to manually generate the patch file by using diff. If this is what you want, you can download the sources from the “Source Code Distributions” section of the Download Page. There is one such page for every major Tomcat version:
If you have chosen to attach a patch to the Bugzilla issue (or email one), then you'll need to download the sources as noted above, make your desired changes and then manually generate your patch using diff (or any other tool).
To submit a GitHub Pull Request you'll need to fork the repository, clone your fork to do the work:
$ git clone https://github.com/$USERNAME/tomcat.git
and then push your changes, and submit a Pull Request via the GitHub UI.
After you‘ve chosen your method of submission, retrieved the sources, and fixed the issue it’s time to submit your work. At this point, just follow the method of submission you chose earlier.
It may take a while for committers to review. Please be patient during this time as all committers are volunteers on the project. If a significant amount of time has lapsed since your submission, such as a couple of months, feel free to either update your BZ, PR, or email the dev list with a message to bump your issue. Sometimes things get lost in all the work and we need a reminder :smile:
Apache Tomcat has very loosely defined coding conventions, but the following guidelines will be useful:
Have you reviewed this guide and found it lacking? Or are you confused about some particular step? If so, please let us know! Or better yet, submit a PR to address the issue :wink: