A lot! First of all, you can try out all your exciting ideas. You can add everything you ever wanted to have in a distro but couldn't. Of course, if you want to introduce some revolutionary changes, it's a good idea to ask others first. You can start by looking at the .spec files. Having checked out the specs from our CVS (cvs up SPECS) look at them and you can easily see what needs to be added and modified. You can see the lists of available CVS modules at CVSWeb. You can start by adding a new package. We have prepared a template which can be a good starting point: check it out from SPECS module in our CVS (file template.spec). Ask people for opinion -- on the mailing list or IRC (#pld). Don't worry if you make an error - you can always go back to a previous revision using -r option of cvs get/checkout/update commands. If you modify specs made by someone else, be careful not to break anything. Always build before committing (OK, unless you found a typo). If you feel the package should be rebuild and updated on our ftp site (e.g. you have corrected a bug, or there is a typo in an otherwise ready package), remember to increase the release number.

Be patient. The packages are sent to our building machines. Build logs are available via web interface, where you can check if building of your package completed successfully. If everything is OK, your package is moved to the i /test directory, then -- if no one complains, after a couple of days -- to the main tree. You can see if people use your package when they complain -- and they do! Check out our bugtracking system to see bug reports. Often these issues are trivial to resolve. Remember to close ticket in BTS after you solved it.

&devel-hacking; &devel-commit-messages;