Charlie Hull
Category: Solr
Do you want to become a contributor to Solr, the open source search server from the Apache Foundation, but don’t know where to start? Here’s your chance!
Eric Pugh of OSC has been working with fellow Apache Solr committer Jason Gerlowski to put together a list of enhancements to the Solr v2 APIs. These new APIs have been designed to streamline and simplify the use of Solr from client libraries and other programs by embracing modern API design, including support for the OpenAPI standard. They use the Jakarta XML Web Services (JAX-RS) framework and will eventually replace the v1 APIs. You can see this happening here on Solr’s JIRA issue tracker.
The work necessary to do this is a combination of cosmetic changes, modifications to Solr’s Admin UI and annotations to help auto-generate documentation. Broken down into small chunks of effort by Jason and Eric, this is a great place to get started on contributing to Solr with two expert mentors who will review your changes and make sure they get committed to Solr’s code base. You’ll learn how Solr is built and maintained, gain experience of the Apache Software Foundation process and help build a truly open source search engine used across the world by thousands of companies including Bloomberg, Salesforce and Instagram. Maybe this will lead you on to become a regular Solr contributor!
If you’re interested and able to help please contact Eric – note that you will need some Java and/or Javascript experience, be familiar with JIRA and willing to join the developer mailing list. We’ll be communicating via email & Slack and will have optional regular Zoom calls to answer questions, talk about ideas, and encourage each other! We’ll also acknowledge your help on OSC’s social media channels and in Solr’s release notes. You can also join our new Solr Contributor Meetup Group where the regular Zoom calls are organised.
Videos
Jason explains how to contribute to Solr in the first workshop session from 20th October 2022, here are his slides and the video is below:
The second workshop session focused on version 1 and version 2 of the Solr APIs, an area where our novice contributors will work. Here are slides and video:
In the third workshop, we learn about the tests built into Solr: