Finding a Project
This page describes how to find a bug to fix, select a project to enhance Lustre or help with Lustre testing. Lustre defects and features or to-do items are logged in the Bugzilla bug tracking system.
You can also also contact the [Mailing_Lists_and_IRC|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.
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 JIRA for key words for open bugs designated easy or medium. 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 JIRA 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 query and looking at the oldest 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 Projects 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 [Test Plans].