Welcome to OpenOffice development!
You might want to start by reviewing the legacy information on OpenOffice.org development. Or, take a look at information posted on the Apache OpenOffice wiki under Documentation - For Developers.
Of course, you will need the source code to do anything. We recommend building in your own environment as a first step.
You don't have to be an actual committer to submit code. You can submit patches through the Apache OpenOffice Bugzilla issue reporting system. You simply need to file an issue and supply your patch as an attachment to the issue.
Please also see our Orientation Modules for information on how the project works and identifying outstanding development tasks.
First, congratulations. Your contributions to the project have been noted and we hope that as a Committer you will be even more active.
But before you are officially given Committer permissions, there are a few administrative steps that you will need to complete.
Submit a signed ICLA to Apache.
Wait for the ICLA to be received and recorded by Apache. You will know when this has occurred when your name appears in the Unlisted ICLAs section on the Apache Committers page. This could take a couple of days, longer if you submitted the ICLA via post.
Once the your ICLA has been recorded, you should send a note to the PMC and request an Apache account. You will want to include your full name and email address, as you entered in the ICLA, as well as your preferred userid. Please check first that your preferred userid is not already in use by another Apache Committer.
Once your Apache account has been created, you will receive an email with further instructions for setting up your account. This may take a couple of days.
If you were also voted as a PMC member, you should then subscribe to the PMC's private mailing list.
Finally, you should read the "Guide for new committers"
Apache OpenOffice welcomes your contributions!
The project now uses Git.
To contribute to the OpenOffice product, you will need to submit subversion patches ("diff" files), and attach them to issues in our issues reporting system, Bugzilla.
Your contributions will be recognized by the committer submitting the PATCH in the log entry for the committed patch, and you will be added to the OpenOffice credits page to recognize your contribution.
The following sections will explain more about this.
Instructions can be found on the Subversion Basics page.
Please note that we are using a Subversion/Bugzilla integration, e.g. when you are committing something and mention the bugzilla issue in the commit summary, then this bugzilla issue gets automatically updated with some short info about the change. The recommended notation to mention e.g. issue 1234 is to use a #i1234# at the start of the commit message summary.
Developer builds are not official releases and may be unstable. But they can be useful to download for those who need early access to builds, but who do not want to compile their own build. They are announced and discussed only on the development list, as they are not production builds. Apache OpenOffice currently has two types of development builds: those generated by buildbots, and those manually generated/built.
Apache OpenOffice makes use of buildbots for some of our environments. You can review the Apache OpenOffice buildbot information here. Additional information on buildbot builds for Windows and Linux64 can be found here.
Development snapshots, which are manually generated, are used as the final step leading up to a release. These are used for final testing before an approved release. You will also find helpful hints for specific platform building here.
Also, please see the Planning Area of the Project Wiki for additional information on current and future releases.