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If you’re looking for inspiration, Impala has a very active JIRA instance. We have labelled some JIRA tickets ‘newbie’ - these are ideal for someone who is looking to learn the codebase. If you find one you like, feel free to email dev@impala.apache.org to discuss it, or dig right in. Before you start, though, register on the Apache JIRA system and ask someone on dev@ to assign the ticket to you. You can't assign yourself a JIRA until this is done. That way you don't end up in a race condition with another new contributor!
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