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How to Contribute

Thanks for using B.A.T.M.A.N.! If you have suggestions, comments, want to tell us about your experiences or discuss problems the best thing is always to use the Mailing List You can always contact us via IRC.

If you like this project and you want to take part and/or give something back, here is a short list of starting points:

Reporting Bugs

If you find a bug, please see if the problem is already known in the by Reading the Tickets: If not, please add a new Ticket:

Please add as much information as possible. In particular interesting are:

  • Which branch (batman, batctl, batman-adv)
  • Which version (0.X, git revision number)
  • kernel version, distribution (and version)
  • machine type (PC, Linksys WRT, Fon, NS2, ...)
  • command line parameters used
  • iptables/firewall rules
  • get a coredump if you experience a segfault
  • your guess what triggered the problem. ;)

Documentation / Feedback

Write an article about your experience with B.A.T.M.A.N. and have it published here or ask us to link to your site:
  • How did you find us ?
  • How does you setup look like ?
  • Where are you building your mesh ?
  • What problems did you encounter ?
  • How did you debug / solve them ?
  • What did you like / not like ?
  • How can B.A.T.M.A.N. improve ?

There's lots of people that want to know about B.A.T.M.A.N. - help us to spread the word! You also can create a wiki account and improve the documentation.

Research

B.A.T.M.A.N. gives much room for research, especially the layer 2 implementation in the kernel. Get in touch with us to share your ideas. If you write papers we are happy to publish them here or link to your page. If you are looking for the right topic or mentorship feel free to contact us. We have more ideas than time to implement them.

Development

You looked in the code ? Fixed bugs ? Added a cool new function ? Integrated B.A.T.M.A.N. in a distribution ? Don't hesitate to let us and others know! We can avoid duplicated work by publishing it here or linking to your page. Patches are always welcome and can be posted on the mailing list to get integrated. We also hand out git access to people that want to get involved.

Submitting patches

If you intend to send us patches, please consider the following guidelines:

  • Prefer small & digestible over long "all in one" patches.
  • No MIME, no links, no compression, no attachments. Just plain text (patches are to be sent inline).
  • Patches sent to the mailing list should include "PATCH" in the subject to make it easier to distinguish between patches and discussions.
  • The mail's subject will become the first line in the commit message. The body contains the longer patch description and the patch (unified format) itself. Please also specify the target branch (e.g. batctl, batman-adv, etc) at the beginning of the subject line.
  • Add a "Signed-off-by: Your Name <>" line to the patch message to make the ownership of the patch clear.
  • Patches for B.A.T.M.A.N. Advanced need to follow the linux kernel coding style closely (use checkpatch.pl to verify your patch) as well as the linux "how to submit patches" guidelines (search for the term SubmitPatches to find thorough documentation).
  • Check it using static analysis tools like sparse (cgcc) and cppcheck
  • Patches against the batman-adv main branch must be formatted using 
    git format-patch $BASECOMMIT
    or an equivalent tool (like b4)
  • README, manpage and sysfs-class-net-* must be updated together with the related source change
  • Add or update kerneldoc to functions and structures you add or modify.
  • batman-adv changes affecting batctl have to be send with the batctl patches in the same patchset
  • it is recommended to use b4 to send the patch mails to the mailinglist - but plain `git send-email` is also fine.
  • An exemplary good submission you may want to look at can be found here: https://patchwork.open-mesh.org/project/b.a.t.m.a.n./patch/1261051915-13960-1-git-send-email-sven.eckelmann@gmx.de/