Re: How to contribute to documentation

[Dirk-Willem van Gulik <di...@covalent.net>]

On Tue, 31 Jul 2001, Richard Heintze wrote:

> It would sure be nice to have these fixed. Personally
> I'm not into fixing them but I'm wondering what the
> policies are for xml.apache.org site: who is allows to
> edit the documentation?

Just go to 'dev.apache.org' to get an idea.

Basically what you do is a cvs checkout of the public repository of the
code/docs using 'cvs'.

Then you hack the thus obtained local copy to your hearths desire...

When done; you do a 'cvs diff' and mail the 'patch' to the mailing list.
(The dev.apache.org has some suggestions about the format. You want to
follow those; as otherwise things get ignored).

As soon as there is consensus (which for doc's is hardly ever a problem!)
that what you did looked good; then one of the committers will commit it,
and from then on your code is part of the releases from there on.

Then goto the beginning of this story and do again..

If you manage to do this too often - and with high quality - then the
committers are most likely going to be fed up with doing your bidding -
and propose that they give you direct commit access.

>From then on you can make the changes directly (and are subject to the
full wrath of the assembled crowd if you fumble/break things).

Another thing you want to check if you do this in the boss their time - or
on equipment fromm the boss - or when it somehow is too near to your
assigned job- is wether you are permitted to do so. Some companies can be
rather upset - but usually only when they find out after the fact. It is
usually easier to get permission beforehand.

Dw

> I'm would like to contribute what I have learned and
> encourage others so we others don't have to go thru
> this pain.
>
> I suppose if I cannot be trusted to edit the web site
> then maybe they could put a link to my web site where
> I plan to create some more detailed documentation for
> running tomcat/IIS with Cocoon, SOAP, JSP, and (my
> next project) JBoss.
>
>     Siegfried
>
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