Committers

Becoming a Committer

To get started contributing to Spark, learn how to contribute – anyone can submit patches, documentation and examples to improve the project.

The PMC regularly votes on adding new committers from the active contributors, based on their contributions to Spark. The qualifications for new committers include:

1. Sustained contributions to Spark: Committers should have a history of major contributions to Spark. An ideal committer will have contributed broadly throughout the project, and have contributed at least one major component where they have taken an "ownership" role. An ownership role means that existing contributors feel that they should run patches for this component by this person.

2. Quality of contributions: Committers more than any other community member should submit simple, well-tested, and well-designed patches. In addition, they should show sufficient expertise to be able to review patches, including making sure they fit within Spark's engineering practices (testability, documentation, API stability, code style, etc). The committership is collectively responsible for the software quality and maintainability of Spark.

3. Community involvement: Committers should have a constructive and friendly attitude in all community interactions. They should also be active on the dev and user list and help mentor newer contributors and users. In design discussions, committers should maintain a professional and diplomatic approach, even in the face of disagreement.

The type and level of contributions considered may vary by project area -- for example, we greatly encourage contributors who want to work on mainly the documentation, or mainly on platform support for specific OSes, storage systems, etc.