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How to contribute PostgreSQL
- 1. How To Contributeto PostgreSQL Hari Babu Kommi
- 2. Your speaker +61 29452 9087 haribabuk@fast.au.fujitsu.com postgresql.fastware.com
- 3. Contents Need of contributionto the PostgreSQL community Advantages of contributing to community Contribution methods
- 4. Need of contribution PostgreSQLis a “world’s most advanced open source database” that powers many mission critical systems around the world. It needs support from individuals and companies to continue it’s development further to compete against major commercial databases.
- 5. Advantages of contribution Contributingto community will benefit both individuals and companies. All the individuals that contributes to PostgreSQL echo system are listed as contributors. https://www.postgresql.org/community/contributors/ All the companies that contributes to PostgreSQL echo system are listed as sponsors. https://www.postgresql.org/about/sponsors/
- 6. Contribution methods There areplenty of ways to contribute to PostgreSQL (echo system) and many people are already doing the same. This topic is to list out the some of the possible ways to contribute to PostgreSQL database by individuals and companies.
- 7. Contribution methods Donation Participation inSurvey Hardware/Infrastructure support Web updates/support Events/Meetup groups Documentation Translation support Answering questions Build farm support Bugs Writing tools/extensions Writing feature/bug fix patches Reviewing of Patches
- 8. Donation The Simple wayto support PostgreSQL NFO is by contributing some donation. The funds that are collected by the PostgreSQL groups are used for various activities such as education, user groups and advocacy. https://www.postgresql.org/about/donate/
- 9. Participation in Survey PostgreSQLusually conducts surveys for every 4 to 6 months. https://www.postgresql.org/community/ Why is it so important to participate in survey? Where the survey results are used and how?
- 10. Participation in Survey Theresults of the latest survey are available in the following link: https://www.postgresql.org/community/survey/93-what- postgresql-10-feature-are-you-most-excited-about/ As you observe that, there are less number of people responded to the survey. Currently the open survey is not reaching many users, needs to identify other approaches by the infrastructure team.
- 11. Hardware/Infrastructure support The serversthat power the services of postgresql.org are provided by different companies and organisations around the world. https://www.postgresql.org/about/servers/ Hardware support can be a test machine or a performance machine I listed a Power2 machine sponsored by IBM to PostgreSQL for performance testing. Power2 configuration Architecture: ppc64le Byte Order: Little Endian CPU(s): 192 On-line CPU(s) list: 0-191 Thread(s) per core: 8 Core(s) per socket: 1 Socket(s): 24 NUMA node(s): 4 Model: IBM,8286-42A L1d cache: 64K L1i cache: 32K L2 cache: 512K L3 cache: 8192K NUMA node0 CPU(s): 0-47 NUMA node1 CPU(s): 48-95 NUMA node2 CPU(s): 96-143 NUMA node3 CPU(s): 144-191
- 12. Web updates/support The infrastructureteam itself takes care of web updates/support. Interested people can register with the following. https://lists.postgresql.org/manage/ (pgsql-www) Currently PostgreSQL website doesn’t scale well on mobile devices. There is no proper details/issues that are available anywhere in the website, so that people can participate in the development. It needs an improvement from community to increase the contribution.
- 13. Events/Meetup groups Thanks forthe Organizers and Sponsors of the PG Day Australia event. Conducting events/local meetups will help in growing the PostgreSQL community. Try to conduct monthly/quarterly meetups. Following are some of the local meetup groups in Australia. https://www.meetup.com/Sydney-PostgreSQL-User-Group/ https://www.meetup.com/melpug/ https://www.meetup.com/Brisbane-PostgreSQL-User-Group/
- 14. Documentation PostgreSQL community providesa very high quality documentation, but there are cases that it may not handle everything and some information may misleading and etc. Register to the following mailing list and provide your updates including the review of the changes suggested by others. https://lists.postgresql.org/manage/ (pgsql-docs) If you’re a document developer or knows the tools that are used for the documentation, you valuable information is welcomed.
- 15. Translations support PostgreSQL programs(server and client) can issue their messages in your favourite language. Creating and maintaining translated message sets needs the help of people who speak their own language well and want to contribute to the PostgreSQL effort. All the translation issues are tracked in redmine. https://redmine.postgresql.org/projects/pgtranslation There is a dedicated mailing list to discuss the translations updates/issues. https://www.postgresql.org/list/pgsql-translators/
- 16. Answering questions Try toanswer the simple to complex questions that are raised by the users not only related to the following, Performance General discussions Administration Etc. PostgreSQL community mailing list is very supportive, you will receive all the information that you needed.
- 17. Build farm support Buildfarm is something like PostgreSQL continuous integration environment. Currently there are extensive set of animals that are present in the build farm, but still there is a need of some more machines with different set of configurations that are used by users in the production environment. If you have some specific hardware/software where you want to PostgreSQL to be running without fail, it is better add that configuration as a build farm animal if that doesn’t exist.
- 18. Bugs PostgreSQL community reviewand it’s extensive build farm support catches most of the problems, but still there may be problems that can occur only with production data. Need your support in validating new features or performance enhancements with respect to quality and functionality. Many people will face problems in sharing the bug details to the community. Steps to follow for quicker bug fix, A reproducible test steps If not, try to provide a call stack with debug symbols. Or provide a core dump in a shared location.
- 19. Bugs Once all detailsare captured, raise the bug with the following bug reporting form. https://www.postgresql.org/account/submitbug/ Try to register to the following mailing list to check the progress of the bug and also the bug patterns, that can help in further testing. https://lists.postgresql.org/manage/ (pgsql-bugs)
- 20. Writing tools/extensions PostgreSQL havemany variety of tools and extensions that are useful for many applications. Before writing any tool/extension by your own for your needs, please make sure that the existing are supported the same. https://www.postgresql.org/download/product-categories/ Writing an extension is easier than writing a core feature.
- 21. Writing feature/bug fixpatches If you found a bug or interested in fixing bugs raised by others, generate a patch and post it to the mailing list. Community acts very quickly in fixing any bugs that arise. Try to clarify the users when they raised a bug, but actually that is an expected behavior with details.
- 22. Writing feature/bug fixpatches If you found some interesting feature and thought of to be present in PostgreSQL. Find out the use case scenario Check for any older discussion on the mailing list Post your idea to community. Once everyone agrees and come to a common approach, generate a POC patch. Every feature that is submitted to PostgreSQL, has to follow the review process. https://commitfest.postgresql.org/ Definitely there may be complete rewrite of the patch based on the feedback.
- 23. Reviewing Patches PostgreSQLis a community database, it needs support from you not just only features, but also from reviewing the submitted patches. Please make sure that if you submit a patch, make sure that you reviewed another patch. Review can be anything from source code, documentation, test and etc. PostgreSQL community started recognizing the contribution from the reviewers also by listing their names in the release notes from version 10. In the past, many patches are not received the much feedback from reviewers especially from actual users of those features.