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<h1>Contribution to POI</h1>
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<div class="h3">
<div class="h3">
<h3>Introduction</h3>
</div>
<div class="h4">
<h4>Disclaimer</h4>
</div>
<p>
Any information in here that might be perceived as legal information is
informational only. We're not lawyers, so consult a legal professional
if needed.
</p>
<div class="h4">
<h4>The Licensing</h4>
</div>
<p>
The POI project is <a href="http://www.opensource.org">OpenSource</a>
and developed/distributed under the <a href="http://www.apache.org/foundation/licence-FAQ.html">
Apache Software License</a>. Unlike other licenses this license allows
free open source development; however, it does not require you to release
your source or use any particular license for your source. If you wish
to contribute to POI (which you're very welcome and encouraged to do so)
then you must agree to release the rights of your source to us under this
license.
</p>
<div class="h4">
<h4>Publicly Available Information on the file formats</h4>
</div>
<p>
In early 2008, Microsoft made a fairly complete set of documentation
on the binary file formats freely and publicly available. These were
released under the <a href="http://www.microsoft.com/interop/osp">Open
Specification Promise</a>, which does allow us to use them for
building open source software under the <a href="http://www.apache.org/foundation/licence-FAQ.html">
Apache Software License</a>.
</p>
<p>
You can download the documentation on Excel, Word, PowerPoint and
Escher (drawing) from
<a href="http://www.microsoft.com/interop/docs/OfficeBinaryFormats.mspx">http://www.microsoft.com/interop/docs/OfficeBinaryFormats.mspx</a>.
Documentation on a few of the supporting technologies used in these
file formats can be downloaded from
<a href="http://www.microsoft.com/interop/docs/supportingtechnologies.mspx">http://www.microsoft.com/interop/docs/supportingtechnologies.mspx</a>.
</p>
<p>
Previously, Microsoft published a book on the Excel 97 file format.
It can still be of plenty of use, and is handy dead tree form. Pick up
a copy of "Excel 97 Developer's Kit" from your favourite second hand
book store.
</p>
<p>
The newer Office Open XML (ooxml) file formats are documented as part
of the ECMA / ISO standardisation effort for the formats. This
documentation is quite large, but you can normally find the bit you
need without too much effort! This can be downloaded from
<a href="http://www.ecma-international.org/publications/standards/Ecma-376.htm">http://www.ecma-international.org/publications/standards/Ecma-376.htm</a>,
and is also under the <a href="http://www.microsoft.com/interop/osp">OSP</a>.
</p>
<p>
It is also worth checking the documentation and code of the other
open source implementations of the file formats.
</p>
<div class="h4">
<h4>I just signed an NDA to get a spec from Microsoft and I'd like to contribute</h4>
</div>
<p>
In short, stay away, stay far far away. Implementing these file formats
in POI is done strictly by using public information. Public information
includes sources from other open source projects, books that state the
purpose intended is for allowing implementation of the file format and
do not require any non-disclosure agreement and just hard work.
We are intent on keeping it
legal, by contributing patches you agree to do the same.
</p>
<p>
If you've ever received information regarding the OLE 2 Compound Document
Format under any type of exclusionary agreement from Microsoft, or
(possibly illegally) received such information from a person bound by
such an agreement, you cannot participate in this project. (Sorry)
</p>
<p>
Those submitting patches that show insight into the file format may be
asked to state explicitly that they have only ever read the publicly
available file format information, and not any received under an NDA
or similar.
</p>
<div class="h3">
<h3>I just want to get involved but don't know where to start</h3>
</div>
<ul>
<li>Read the rest of the website, understand what POI is and what it does,
the project vision, etc.</li>
<li>Use POI a bit, look for gaps in the documentation and examples.</li>
<li>Join the mail lists and share your knowledge with others.</li>
<li>Get <a href="../subversion.html">Subversion</a> and check out the POI source tree</li>
<li>Documentation is always the best place to start contributing, maybe you found that if the documentation just told you how to do X then it would make more sense, modify the documentation.</li>
<li>Get used to building POI, you'll be doing it a lot, be one with the build, know its targets, etc.</li>
<li>Write Unit Tests. Great way to understand POI. Look for classes that aren't tested, or aren't tested on a public/protected method level, start there.</li>
<li>Download the file format documentation from Microsoft -
<a href="http://www.microsoft.com/interop/docs/OfficeBinaryFormats.mspx">OLE2 Binary File Formats</a> or
<a href="http://www.ecma-international.org/publications/standards/Ecma-376.htm">OOXML XML File Formats</a>
</li>
<li>Submit patches (see below) of your contributions, modifications.</li>
<li>Fill out new features, see <a href="http://issues.apache.org/bugzilla/buglist.cgi?product=POI">Bug database</a> for suggestions.</li>
</ul>
<div class="h3">
<h3>Submitting Patches</h3>
</div>
<p>
Create patches by getting the latest sources from Subversion.
Alter or add files as appropriate. Then, from the poi directiory,
type svn diff > mypatch.patch. This will capture all of your changes
in a patch file of the appropriate format. However, svn diff won't
capture any new files you may have added. So, if you've added any
files, create an archive (tar.bz2 preferred as its the smallest) in a
path-preserving archive format, relative to your poi directory.
You'll attach both files in the next step.
</p>
<p>
Patches are submitted via the <a href="http://issues.apache.org/bugzilla/buglist.cgi?product=POI">Bug Database</a>.
Create a new bug, set the subject to [PATCH] followed by a brief description. Explain you patch and any special instructions and submit/save it.
Next, go back to the bug, and create attachements for the patch files you
created. Be sure to describe not only the files purpose, but its format.
(Is that ZIP or a tgz or a bz2 or what?).
</p>
<p>
Make sure your patches include the @author tag on any files you've altered
or created. Make sure you've documented your changes and altered the
examples/etc to reflect them. Any new additions should have unit tests.
Lastly, ensure that you've provided approriate javadoc. (see
<a href="http://poi.apache.org/resolutions/res001.html">Coding
Standards</a>). Patches that are of low quality may be rejected or
the contributer may be asked to bring them up to spec.
</p>
<p>If you use a unix shell, you may find the following following
sequence of commands useful for building the files to attach.</p>
<pre class="code">
# Run this in the root of the checkout, i.e. the directory holding
# build.xml and poi.pom
# Build the directory to hold new files
mkdir /tmp/poi-patch/
mkdir /tmp/poi-patch/new-files/
# Get changes to existing files
svn diff > /tmp/poi-patch/diff.txt
# Capture any new files, as svn diff won't include them
# Preserve the path
svn status | grep "^\?" | awk '{printf "cp --parents %s /tmp/poi-patch/new-files/\n", $2 }' | sh -s
# tar up the new files
cd /tmp/poi-patch/new-files/
tar jcvf ../new-files.tar.bz2
cd ..
# Upload these to bugzilla
echo "Please upload to bugzilla:"
echo " /tmp/poi-patch/diff.txt"
echo " /tmp/poi-patch/new-files.tar.bz2"
</pre>
<div id="authors" align="right">by Nicola Ken Barozzi, Marc Johnson, Andrew C. Oliver, Tetsuya Kitahata</div>
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distrib
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files
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