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<chapter id="contribute">
<title
>Contributing</title>

<qandaset>
<qandaentry>
<question>
<para
>How can I contribute to &kde;?</para>
</question>
<answer>
<para
>&kde; is a free software project that lives from voluntary contributions. Everybody is encouraged to contribute to &kde;. Not only programmers are welcome. There are many ways in which you can help to improve &kde;:</para>
<itemizedlist>
<listitem
><para
>Test the software.</para
></listitem>
<listitem
><para
>Send in bug reports. For more information on this, see <link linkend="bug-report"
>How do I submit a bug report?</link
>.</para
></listitem>
<listitem
><para
>Write documentation or help files. You can get some information by visiting the <ulink url="http://i18n.kde.org/doc/"
>&kde; Editorial Team Home Page</ulink
>.</para
></listitem>
<listitem
><para
>Translate programs, documentation, and help files. For more information on this, you should visit <ulink url="http://i18n.kde.org"
>The &kde; Translators' and Documenters' Web Site</ulink
>.</para
></listitem>
<listitem
><para
>Draw nice icons or compose sound effects. You can visit the <ulink url="http://artist.kde.org/"
>&kde; artists page</ulink
> to find out more.</para
></listitem>
<listitem
><para
>Write articles and books about &kde;. If you want to help spread the word about &kde;, simply send an email to <email
>kde-pr@kde.org</email
>. This will get you in touch with the &kde; public relations volunteers.</para
></listitem>
<listitem
><para
>Program new &kde; applications. Please refer to <xref linkend="programming"/> for more information.</para
></listitem>
<listitem
><para
>Of course, sponsors are also welcome. :-)</para
></listitem>
</itemizedlist>
<para
>There are several places to look for more information if you want to get involved in the development. The first step is to subscribe to some of the <ulink url="http://www.kde.org/mailinglists/"
>mailing lists</ulink
>. You will soon see something that can be improved or added.</para>
</answer>
</qandaentry>

<qandaentry>
<question id="bug-report">
<para
>How do I submit a bug report?</para>
</question>
<answer>
<para
>There is a bug tracking system available at <ulink url="http://bugs.kde.org"
>http://bugs.kde.org</ulink
>. The system features a wizard to submit new bug reports and a list of all known bugs.</para>
<para
>The easiest way to submit a bug is to select <menuchoice
><guimenu
>Help</guimenu
><guimenuitem
>Report Bug...</guimenuitem
></menuchoice
> from the menu bar of the application with the bug. This will open a small dialogue box with a link to the bug tracking system. Please make sure to follow the instructions of the bug reporting wizard.</para>
</answer>
</qandaentry>

<qandaentry>
<question id="programming">
<para
>I want to program for &kde;. What should I do first?</para>
</question>
<answer>
<para
>Everybody is encouraged to develop software for &kde;. What you should do first depends strongly on your experience, &eg; whether you have already learned C++ or have experience with the &Qt; toolkit and so on.</para>
<para
>To get into &kde; programming, you will need some basic tools: <application
>automake</application
>, <application
>autoconf</application
>, and <application
>egcs</application
>. You should look to <ulink url="http://developer.kde.org/"
>http://developer.kde.org/</ulink
> for more tips.</para>
<para
>Another excellent resource for learning &kde; programming is the &Qt; online tutorials. These are installed along with &Qt;. To view them, open <filename
>$<envar
>QTDIR</envar
>/doc/html/index.html</filename
> in &konqueror; and bookmark it. The tutorials can be found under "Using Qt". The source code for each lesson can be found in the <filename class="directory"
>$<envar
>QTDIR</envar
>/tutorial</filename
> directory.</para>
<para
>There is, however, one thing that everybody interested in programming for &kde; should do: <emphasis
>subscribe to the developers mailing list</emphasis
>. To subscribe, you have to send an email to <ulink url="mailto:kde-devel-request@kde.org"
>kde-devel-request@kde.org</ulink
> with the subject <userinput
>subscribe <replaceable
>your_email_address</replaceable
></userinput
>. <important
><para
>Please read <link linkend="subscribe"
>How to subscribe/unsubscribe to these lists</link
> carefully. Everything said there applies to the development list as well.</para
></important
></para>
</answer>
</qandaentry>

<qandaentry>
<question>
<para
>How do I get access to the <acronym
>CVS</acronym
>?</para>
</question>
<answer>
<para
>The &kde; project uses <acronym
>CVS</acronym
> to develop the core parts of the software. Usually, when you have changed one of the parts (&eg; fixed a bug), and you want to commit this change, the best way is to create a patch against a current snapshot and send this patch to the developer/maintainer of the respective program.</para>
<para
>If you are doing this more or less regularly, you can ask Stephan Kulow, <email
>coolo@kde.org</email
> for direct access to the <acronym
>CVS</acronym
> server. But be aware that more users will slow down <acronym
>CVS</acronym
> access for all developers, so we want to keep the number of people with direct <acronym
>CVS</acronym
> access reasonably small. But feel free to ask!</para>
</answer>
</qandaentry>

<qandaentry>
<question>
<para
>I am just curious. Can I have read-only access to the <acronym
>CVS</acronym
>?</para>
</question>
<answer>
<para
>Yes. It is possible to get read-only access to the <acronym
>CVS</acronym
> repository with <application
>cvsup</application
> or <application
>cvs</application
> utility. You can find more information about how to set up <application
>cvsup</application
> for the &kde; repository from <ulink url="http://developer.kde.org/source/cvsup.html"
>How to use <application
>cvsup</application
> to get &kde;</ulink
>.</para>
<para
>In addition, anonymous <acronym
>CVS</acronym
> service is also available. To find out more about how to set up and use anonymous <acronym
>CVS</acronym
>, please see <ulink url="http://developer.kde.org/source/anoncvs.html"
>here</ulink
>.</para>
</answer>
</qandaentry>

<qandaentry>
<question>
<para
>Are there any <application
>cvs</application
> mirror sites for &kde;?</para>
</question>
<answer>
<para
>Yes. The main &kde; server is normally very busy. Please take a look at <ulink url="http://developer.kde.org/source/cvsupmirrors.html"
>http://developer.kde.org/source/cvsupmirrors.html</ulink
> and <ulink url="http://developer.kde.org/source/anoncvs.html"
>http://developer.kde.org/source/anoncvs.html</ulink
> for the list of available mirrors.</para
>  
<para
>Once you have selected a new <application
>cvsup</application
> server, simply replace <screen
> 
*default host=cvs.kde.org
</screen
> with <screen
> 
*default host=cvsup.your.new.host
</screen
> in your <application
>cvsup</application
> script.</para>
<para
>The instructions to change the anoncvs server can be found on <ulink url="http://developer.kde.org/source/anoncvs.html"
>http://developer.kde.org/source/anoncvs.html</ulink
>, too. </para>
</answer>
</qandaentry>

<qandaentry>
<question>
<para
>How do I go about translating &kde; programs into my native language?</para>
</question>
<answer>
<para
>Look at the <ulink url="http://i18n.kde.org"
>The &kde; Translators' and Documenters' Web Site</ulink
> to see whether your program is already translated (most are). Otherwise you will find information there on how to do it yourself.</para>
</answer>
</qandaentry>
</qandaset>
</chapter>


