Ceph is an open source project, and it has been built through the efforts of its dedicated, passionate community. If you find Ceph useful, the best way to say thanks is to contribute back. Here are a few things you can do to pitch in:
Join the List and IRC Channel
Becoming an active member of the community’s discussions is the best way to get to know people, and you can reinforce your understanding of Ceph by answering questions and helping others learn. Join the mailing list and hang out in the IRC channel – that’s where it all happens!
Visit the Mailing Lists & IRC page for more info.
Build Ceph From Source
Using pre-built packages or Chef cookbooks may be the quickest way to get Ceph up and running, but building from source can help you become familiar with how everything is put together.
Visit our Ceph Source Code documentation page for instructions. As you work through the build process, feel free to update the documentation or submit issues along the way.
Submit Issues
Are you having problems building or running Ceph in your environment? Every user has a unique storage architecture and workload, so it’s possible you’ve found a bug that nobody else is experiencing.
You can search through our issue list to make sure you’ve found something new. If it is, share it with the community by creating a new issue and including as much detail as you can.
Fix Issues!
While you’re searching through the issue list, you might come across something that you’d like to fix! Don’t let us stop you.
Once you’ve fixed it, the best way to submit your work to the team is through a GitHub pull request. Posting patch files on the mailing list is, of course, always welcome.
Help With Documentation
Not a coder? If you’d rather write prose than code, we can use your help in making the Ceph documentation more thorough. Our documentation is always growing and changing, and there are lots of spots that need additional detail. Heck, there may even still be entire sections that need to be written!
The documentation lives inside the /doc directory of the main Ceph repository. It’s written in reStructuredText, an easy-to-write text format.
For more information, read the documentation pages on Prerequisites for Building Ceph Documentation and Building Ceph Documentation.
Dedicate Engineering Resources
Do you work for a company that’s deploying Ceph? Dedicating engineering resources to Ceph is the best way to ensure the ongoing evolution of Ceph. Drop a note to the mailing list and tell us what you’d like to accomplish; we’d be glad to hear from you.