Pull requests should go via GitHub; there are some nice general guidelines for contributing on GitHub if you haven't done it before.
Unless your fix is trivial, it's a good idea to look for related discussions and maybe open an issue to discuss, before making a pull request. Discussion in advance may keep you from wasting time on an approach that won't work out. However, if you communicate better in code than in words, starting with a patch is fine... just be willing to revise it!
Before we can accept pull requests, you will need to agree to the Typesafe Contributor License Agreement online, using your GitHub account - it takes 30 seconds. You can do this at http://www.typesafe.com/contribute/cla
Expect that most PRs will need revision before merge. If people suggest revisions, you can make them yourself or wait for a maintainer to do it on their own timeline. The larger the PR, the more revision will likely be needed.
To make a release you'll need to be a maintainer with GitHub permissions to push to the master and gh-pages branches, and Sonatype permissions to publish.
Here are the steps, which should be automated but aren't (PR welcome!):
- write release notes in NEWS.md following the format already in there. update README with the new version. Commit.
- create a signed git tag "vX.Y.Z"
- start sbt;
show version
should confirm that the version was taken from the tag - clean
- test (double check that release works)
- doc (double check that docs build, plus build docs to be copied to gh-pages later)
- if test or doc fails, delete the tag, fix it, start over.
- publishSigned
- make a separate clone of the repo in another directory and check out the gh-pages branch
- /bin/rm -rf latest/api on gh-pages checkout
- copy config/target/api from master checkout to vX.Y.Z in gh-pages so you have vX.Y.Z/index.html
- copy config/target/api from master checkout into latest/ so you have latest/api/index.html
- commit all that to gh-pages, check the diff for sanity (latest/api should be mostly just changed timestamps)
- push gh-pages
- log into sonatype website and go through the usual hoops (under Staging Repositories, search for com.typesafe, verify the artifacts in it, close, release)
- push the "vX.Y.Z" tag
- announce release, possibly wait for maven central to sync first