Contributing to the Neutrino Operating System (aka Core OS)#

The Neutrino Operating System project encompasses the kernel, process manager as well as lots of bits and pieces (libraries, services and utilities) considered to be the building blocks for a Neutrino based system. The comments below apply to source code comments or contributions in all areas of this project.

Reporting Bugs or Requesting Features#

The migration from QNX's internal bug and feature tracking system to a new community based tracker has not yet been completed, and this is the favoured way of reporting and monitoring bugs and features.

The community development roadmap team is aiming to have the tracker online for 4Q2007, which would make it an excellent Christmas present.

Until the tracker is available, we are going to use the forums to discuss these items:

• Build oriented issues (warnings, compile breakages on hosts or targets) should be posted in the OS Dev forum.
• Code/Logic oriented bugs should be posted in the OS Dev forum.
• Feature discussions and new development should be posted in the OS Tech forum.

Even though the tracker is not yet on-line, you will see that source code commit messages contain references like PR:<number> or PR#<number>. These numbers reflect bugs in the current internal QNX bug and feature tracking system. The new tracker will use the same numbers so that when it comes on-line we will hopefully be able to cross reference the detail around these bugs and features.

Providing Patches#

Patches are always welcome ... for both bugs and new features as the case may be.

• Patches should be made against the latest HEAD branch checkout of the OS source code
• Patches should be associated with, and attached to a tracker item.
  • Consider this rule null and void until the tracker actually becomes available =;-(
• Request for review, comment and potentially commit of a patch should be made to the appropriate OS forum
  • Build oriented patches (warnings, compile breakages on hosts or targets) should be posted in the OS Dev
  • Code/Logic oriented patches should be posted in the OS Dev
  • Feature discussions and new development patches should be posted in the OS Tech and the best practices. In particular source code patches based on GPL/LGPL code will most likely be rejected.

While patches from all developers are welcome, at this time the list of project committers is limited to the QNX Core OS developers. The legal folks are working hard to break down the barriers to allow external (non-QNX) committers to the Neutrino Operating System project and the community development roadmap team aims to have the process worked out for early/mid-2008.