Introduction

Welcome! The Dataverse Project is an open source project that loves contributors!

Intended Audience

This guide is intended primarily for developers who want to work on the main Dataverse codebase at https://github.com/IQSS/dataverse but see the Contributing Code section of the Contributor Guide for other code you can work on!

To get started, you’ll want to set up your Development Environment and make sure you understand the branching strategy described in the Version Control section and how to make a pull request. Testing is expected. Opinions about Coding Style are welcome!

Getting Help

If you have any questions at all, please reach out to other developers via https://chat.dataverse.org, the dataverse-dev mailing list, the dataverse-community mailing list, or community calls.

Core Technologies

Dataverse is a Jakarta EE application that is compiled into a WAR file and deployed to an application server (app server) which is configured to work with a relational database (PostgreSQL) and a search engine (Solr).

We make use of a variety of Jakarta EE technologies such as JPA, JAX-RS, JMS, and JSF. In addition, we use parts of Eclipse MicroProfile such as MicroProfile Config.

The frontend is built using PrimeFaces and Bootstrap. A new frontend is being built using React at https://github.com/IQSS/dataverse-frontend

Roadmap

For the roadmap, please see https://www.iq.harvard.edu/roadmap-dataverse-project

Kanban Board

You can get a sense of what’s currently in flight (in dev, in QA, etc.) by looking at https://github.com/orgs/IQSS/projects/34

Issue Tracker

The main issue tracker is https://github.com/IQSS/dataverse/issues but note that individual projects have their own issue trackers.

Related Guides

If you are wondering about how to contribute generally, please see the Contributor Guide.

If you are a developer who wants to make use of the Dataverse APIs, please see the API Guide.

If you have frontend UI questions, please see the Style Guide. For the new frontend, see https://github.com/IQSS/dataverse-frontend

If you are a Docker enthusiasts, please check out the Container Guide.

Related Projects

Note: this list is somewhat old. Please see also the Contributing Code section of the Contributor Guide.

As a developer, you also may be interested in these projects related to Dataverse:

• External Tools - add additional features to the Dataverse Software without modifying the core: Building External Tools

• Dataverse Software API client libraries - use Dataverse Software APIs from various languages: Client Libraries

• DVUploader - a stand-alone command-line Java application that uses the Dataverse Software API to support upload of files from local disk to a Dataset: https://github.com/IQSS/dataverse-uploader

• dataverse-sample-data - populate your Dataverse installation with sample data: https://github.com/IQSS/dataverse-sample-data

• dataverse-metrics - aggregate and visualize metrics for Dataverse installations around the world: https://github.com/IQSS/dataverse-metrics

• Configuration management scripts - Ansible, Puppet, etc.: See Advanced Installation section in the Installation Guide.

• Universal Numerical Fingerprint (UNF) (Java) - a Universal Numerical Fingerprint: https://github.com/IQSS/UNF

• DataTags (Java and Scala) - tag datasets with privacy levels: https://github.com/IQSS/DataTags

• Matrix - a visualization showing the connectedness and collaboration between authors and their affiliations.

• Third party apps - make use of Dataverse installation APIs: Apps

• chat.dataverse.org - chat interface for Dataverse Project users and developers: https://github.com/IQSS/chat.dataverse.org

• [Your project here] :)