[lwip-members] the contrib text so far

[Jani Monoses]

Here's what I've written.It could go to the web pages as David suggests or
we can have it in the source or both or have a link to the URL in the sources.


How to contribute to lwIP

Here is a short list of suggestions to anybody working with lwIP and 
trying to contribute bugreports, fixes, enhancements, platform ports etc.
First of all as you may already know lwIP is a volunteer project so feedback
to fixes or questions might often come late.Hopefully the bug and patch 
tracking 
features of savannah help us not lose users' input.


The suggestions:

- if you think you found a bug make sure it's not already filed in the 
bugtracker at savannah
- if you have a fix put the patch on savannah.If it's a patch that affects both 
core and arch specific
stuff please separate them so that the core can be applied separately while 
leaving the other patch 'open'
The preffered way is to NOT touch archs you can't test and let maintainers take 
care of them.This is a good
way to see if they are used at all - the same goes for unix netifs except tapif.
- do not file a bug and post a fix to it to the patch area.Either a bug report 
or a patch will be enough.
If you correct an existing  bug then attach the patch to the bug rather than 
creating a new entry in the patch area.
- trivial patches (compiler warning fixes, spelling typos or anything obvious 
which takes a line or two)
can go to the lwip-users list.This is still the fastest way of interaction and 
the list is not so crowded
as to allow for loss of fixes.Putting bugs on savannah and subsequently closing 
them is too much an overhead
for repoting a compiler warning fix.The same for indentation fixes.

For platform porters:

- if you've ported lwIP to a platform (an OS, a uC/processor or a combination 
of these) and you think it
could benefit others[1] you might want to post an url to a tarball or zip from 
which it can be imported 
to the contrib CVS module.Then you get CVS access and have to maintain your 
port :)


[1] - lwIP CVS should not be just a place to keep your port so you don't have 
to set up your own CVS :)
Especially welcome are ports to common enough OS/hardware that others can have 
access too.