Communication¶
About the contributors
The group of contributors is full of experts, software engineers and core developers but also full of users, learners and enthusiasts that love doing what we do and we want to spread this enthusiasm to you also.
We all have silly questions and we all need help lots of times. We encourage you to be open to communication and we will help as much as we can.
Due to the scale of the project which includes many languages, everybody contributing will be faced with new things needed to be learned. Even the most seasoned C++ developer will need to ask basic questions about R for example.
When communicating, it’s important you mark your communication with appropriate tags ([C++], [R], [Ruby] etc.) so it gets noticed by the right people.
Where to get help 👋¶
For any question you may have or problems you are facing you can write to user or development Mailing Lists or you can create an issue on GitHub.
For searching through the issues, reporting bugs and creating feature requests or proposals you can use JIRA issue tracker.
JIRA¶
When to use JIRA?
If you want to report a bug.
If you want to propose a new feature.
If you want to propose a bigger change in the documentation.
In these cases you can create a JIRA issue and connect with other contributors in the issue comments. It is good to mention the way you are planning to solve the issue and have one of the Arrow developers agree with your basic proposal for fixing it. Better to ask before you spend too much of your time on something that we might think is not a good idea.
If you want to solve an issue that is already in JIRA, you should connect with other contributors in the issue comments.
JIRA is used to discuss the problem before a Pull Request is possibly made (how to start, where to search for the solution, etc..).
GitHub¶
Further options of communicating are provided through GitHub where the project is hosted. What we use are GitHub Issues and Pull Requests.
When to use GitHub?
If you have a problem with building one of the Arrow libraries, you can create an issue on GitHub and discuss the possible solution (or write to the user mailing list).
Making an issue about things you are not sure about may feel intimidating, but it is also useful for others and the project.
Note
Make sure to add which operating system and Arrow version you are using in the issue description plus the debug information/error.
If you have a new contribution already written, you can create a Pull Request after creating a JIRA ticket and mentioning the way you plan to implement it.
GitHub is also used to discuss your work after the Pull Request is made.
Mailing Lists¶
You can subscribe to the user or development mailing list and browse for previous topics or ask questions. Whereas discussion on GitHub and JIRA only notifies people who have subscribed to that particular Pull Request or issue, the mailing list allows you to broadcast to all users or developers. Use these when you want to get feedback or answers from a wider audience.
There is also a biweekly developers sync call that anyone is welcome to join. It is announced on the development mailing list together with the link to join.
See also
More information and links for subscribing to the mailing lists can be found here.
Recommended learning resources¶
To find articles on concepts important to Arrow as well as recommended books for learning languages visit Additional information and resources.