Finding a Project

(Updated: Nov 2009)

This page describes how to find a bug to fix, select a project to enhance Lustre, help with Lustre testing, or contribute to the Lustre user documentation. Lustre defects and features or to-do items are logged in the Bugzilla bug tracking system.

You can also also contact the Lustre Development mailing list (often referred to as lustre-devel) to discuss ideas for projects that match your skills and interests. Note that Lustre encompasses a number of development areas, including user tools, documentation, disk filesystems, networking, kernel integration, etc., so you can almost always find a project that is interesting and challenging. (For a user documentation project, submit your idea to the Lustre documentation team.)

Having a specific problem to fix requires an understanding of the flow of operations and how that maps to specific code. It gives you a concrete goal that provides a context for investigating the code, rather than just reading vaguely through the vast Lustre code base.

Once you have selected a project, contact lustre-devel to discuss the best approach to take and to keep others aware of what you are working on.

Finding a Bug to Fix

Fixing bugs in Lustre is a good way to become familiar with the Lustre code if you've not worked on it before. Some ways to find a bug you'd like to work on are:

• Search Bugzilla key words for bugs designated "easy" bugs. Some Lustre developers use this keyword to indicate that a bug could be fixed by someone without in-depth familiarity with the Lustre code.
• Search Bugzilla for very old Lustre bugs. These are typically non-critical bugs that are not dependent on a release timeline. They can vary widely in complexity. In particular, doing an empty Bugzilla query and looking at the first 100 items (sorted by bug number) shows a lot of bugs that are either relatively hard to reproduce, not generally visible to users, or "nice-to-have" features that no customer has specifically prioritized to be fixed.

Selecting a Project to Enhance Lustre

If you'd like to take on a project to enhance or add a new feature to Lustre, consider one of these options:

• Pick a project from the Lustre Project List. For guidance in selecting or proceeding with a project, contact lustre-devel.

• Ask for a project on lustre-devel. This mailing list is read by many of the Lustre developers and is a good place for questions, ideas, feedback.

• Assist with keeping Lustre up-to-date with recent kernel changes. Porting Lustre to newer kernel versions is an ongoing effort, given the large number of vendor and upstream kernel releases. For some changes, a simple fix to the Lustre code will be required, while for others, a good understanding of the Linux kernel and how Lustre interfaces with it is needed.
• Propose a new feature that can be developed as a separate module on top of Lustre. Be sure to get feedback on your proposal by contacting lustre-devel before you get started.

Helping with Lustre Testing

Testing Lustre under a variety of workloads is always of interest. The more unusual the IO pattern used by a benchmark, application, or testing tool, the more likely it is to find something of interest.

To find out how you can contribute to the testing of upcoming Lustre releases, see Lustre Test Plans.

Contributing to Lustre User Documentation

You are invited to contribute to the Lustre wiki or the Lustre Operations Manual.

Contribute to the Lustre wiki by:

• Sending your enhancement request or description of a defect to lustre-wiki-feedback@sun.com.
• Creating content for a new topic for the Lustre wiki and submitting it to lustre-wiki-feedback@sun.com.

Contribute to the Lustre Operations Manual by:

• Sending your enhancement request or description of a defect to the Lustre documentation team.
• Writing content to fulfill an enhancement request. You can find a project by searching Bugzilla using the search criteria "Documentation" and "Manual Topics". Submit your content to the Lustre documentation team.