Participating in Obnam development
==================================

The Obnam project is quite small, as far as software projects go.
There is one main developer, plus a few others who sometimes help out.
It would be nice to have more people involved, and this chapter is an
introduction for that.

It is a common misunderstanding that only code matters in a software
project. On the contrary, without a number of other things, code is
useless, particularly so in a free software project, including Obnam.
Examples of necessary things in almost any serious software project:

* writing and updating documentation, which includes manuals and
  websites
* translating documentation, and the software's user interface
* providing support to users with questions or problems
* reporting actionable bugs
* processing bug reports: asking for clarifications, reproducing the
  reported problem, finding the cause of the problem, and developing a
  suitable fix
* porting the software to various platforms, including different
  operating systems, different versions of said operating systems,
  different versions of the languages and libraries the software uses,
  different hardware, etc
* quality assurance: developing and performing manual and automated
  tests and benchmarks, and analysing results
* hosting and operating web sites, mailing lists, IRC channels, other
  communication channels
* handling project governance, which includes dealing with conflicts
  between people
* managing the project in general, including making sure things don't
  stall
* finally, writing the code itself, which is a necessary, but not
  sufficient part of having a project that people other than the
  developers can use it

This list is insufficient; additions are welcome. See the rest of this
chapter for suggestions on how to contribute to the list.


Helping support users
---------------------

Writing and updating documentation
----------------------------------

Developing the code
-------------------

Project governance
------------------