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Impala is an Apache-licensed open-source SQL query engine for data stored in Apache Hadoop clusters. We welcome contributions! This document contains some guidelines for contributing to Impala, and suggestions for the kind of contributions you can make.
What should I contribute?
Report Bugs
Some of the most useful contributions to Impala are bug reports. If you discover a bug in Impala, please open a new JIRA ticket at the Impala JIRA tracker (after first checking to see if the bug has already been reported).
Bug reports are best when they contain a precise description of the problem, a minimal set of steps to reproduce the issue, and a comprehensive description of your environment (what version of Impala are you running? Are you using HDFS, S3 or HBase?)
Code
As with other open source communities, the best way to engage is to start small, by fixing some bugs or contributing small features. By doing so, you will earn a reputation as a contributor of high-quality patches, you will get to know the Impala community, and you will become familiar with our process for contribution.
If you’re looking for inspiration, Impala has a very active JIRA instance. We have labelled some JIRA tickets with labels that start with the string ‘ramp-up’ - these are ideal for someone who is looking to learn the codebase.
Impala is extremely actively developed, and all parts of the code are changing quickly as we work to meet Impala’s roadmap and provide the features our customers need. We are therefore very unlikely to be able to accept large, unsolicited patches into the codebase. If you are considering undertaking a substantial piece of work, please be forewarned: we cannot guarantee that we will be able to accept it, or that we will have the time to review it. If you are unsure, please ask before you start work.
Documentation
We also strongly encourage improvements to our developer documentation: we need better build documentation, getting started guides, style guides and more!
How do I contribute code?
Find
Find a JIRA that you would like to work on (or file one if you have discovered a new issue!). If no-one is working on it, assign it to yourself only if you intend to work on it shortly. Ramp-up JIRAs are a great place to look for your first patch ideas.
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We may sometimes decide not to accept a proposed feature or bugfix. This does not mean we do not value your contribution, but more likely that we feel that it does not align with the goals of the project or it is not the right time.
Fix
Before getting started, you'll want to get your development environment set up. Read bin/bootstrap_development.sh to get going.
Now start coding! As you are writing your patch, please keep the following things in mind:
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