Guide for GSOC Contribution

[Suniti]

Hi Team,

                   I am Suniti, a 2023 graduate, currently working as a software engineer at Atlassian. I am interested to be a GSOC contributor with this organization. Can I get some help with the initial steps and how to get started for the same.

Thank you!

[fra...@cs.yorku.ca]

As Cyrille wrote some time ago:

As there were several posts asking on how to get started, the main challenge is to understand what JPF does. As a program analysis tool, it is rather different from the typical tool or library in that its input is another program rather than normal data.

Please check our wiki: https://github.com/javapathfinder/jpf-core/wiki

The introduction is recommended to learn what JPF is about, followed by "How to obtain and install JPF" and "How to use JPF".

To contribute, the best way to get started is to write a meaningful unit test. The test should cover some functionality that existing tests do not cover. Look at existing tests and "Writing JPF tests" on the wiki for more guidance.

Your new test could be another test in an existing JPF test class (if it fits there) or in a new class of its own.

If your new test passes: Great! You have shown that JPF correctly handles a certain case.

If your new test fails: Even better! We now have an *issue* that we should try to fix. The next step would be to create an issue report. You can see existing issues on our issue tracker:

https://github.com/javapathfinder/jpf-core/issues

You can even start writing tests by looking at some of the issues and try to create a test for it (if there is none yet).

Once you have a failing test and an issue, then you can try to work on that to fix that aspect in JPF. This is often a bit more complex than writing a test, hence I recommend trying to write a unit test first.

[Suniti]

Thank you so much!