Contribute to BOINC

There are several areas in which you can contribute to BOINC.

Each area has its own communication channel (typically an email list). If you want to contribute in an area, you should read the communication channel to get an idea of what is involved.

In some areas, your contributions are evaluated by committers before being used. At some point, if you make a lot of good contributions, you can ask to become a committer yourself, by posting to the area's email list.

Programming

Help develop, maintain, and debug BOINC. Various technical skills (C++, PHP, CSS, SQL, WxWidgets) are required for different parts of BOINC; details are here.

The BOINC source code is maintained in ​Github.

Communication

the ​boinc_dev email list (for discussion) and the Github issue tracking system (for specific bugs and feature requests).

To contribute

submit patches (either via Github, or email diffs to boinc_dev).

Committers

David Anderson, Rom Walton, Rytis Slatkevicius, Christian Beer, Nicolas Alvarez, Eric Korpela.

Testing

Help test new versions of BOINC.

Communication

the ​boinc_alpha email list, and the ​Github issue tracking system. The boinc_alpha list is where new versions (for testing) are announced.

To contribute

the best way to contribute is by [http://boinc.berkeley.edu/alpha/ joining the BOINC Alpha Test project]. You can also just submit bug reports on Github.

Committers

David Anderson, Rom Walton.

Documentation

Communication

the boinc_doc Google group.

To contribute

review, update, improve, and extend the BOINC documentation. Although both user and project documentation are in Wiki form, they're not publicly editable because of problems with spammers. You can send revisions to a committer.

Committers

David Anderson, Rom Walton.

Translation

Many parts of BOINC are translatable: the BOINC Manager and Android GUI, the BOINC web site, the generic part of BOINC project sites, and the project-specific part of some project's web sites. You can volunteer to translate this text into non-English languages.

Communication

The ​boinc_loc email list.

To contribute

Post a request on the email list to do translation for a language of your choice.

Committers

Rom Walton

Support

You can provide "customer support" to new BOINC participants: answering their questions about volunteer computing and the various BOINC-based projects, helping them download and install BOINC, and helping them fix whatever problems they encounter. There are two customer support systems: the message boards on the BOINC web site, and an online system where users can contact you personally via Skype or email.

Communication

the BOINC message boards, and the ​boinc_helpers email list.

To contribute

you can jump right in by answering questions on the BOINC message boards. If you're willing to provide online (one on one) support, register to be a BOINC help volunteer.

Committers

The moderators on the BOINC message boards are Jord van der Elst and Kathryn Marks.