Some of the issues on the issue tracker are marked with the "Newbie" label. If you're interested in contributing to Storm but don't know where to begin, these are good issues to start with. These issues are a great way to get your feet wet with learning the codebase because they require learning about only an isolated portion of the codebase and are a relatively small amount of work.
The Implementation docs section of the wiki gives detailed walkthroughs of the codebase. Reading through these docs is highly recommended to understand the codebase.
Contributions to the Storm codebase should be sent as GitHub pull requests. If there's any problems to the pull request we can iterate on it using GitHub's commenting features.
For small patches, feel free to submit pull requests directly for them. For larger contributions, please use the following process. The idea behind this process is to prevent any wasted work and catch design issues early on:
Modules built on top of Storm (like spouts, bolts, etc) that aren't appropriate for Storm core can be done as your own project or as part of @stormprocessor. To be part of @stormprocessor put your project on your own Github and then send an email to the mailing list proposing to make it part of @stormprocessor. Then the community can discuss whether it's useful enough to be part of @stormprocessor. Then you'll be added to the @stormprocessor organization and can maintain your project there. The advantage of hosting your module in @stormprocessor is that it will be easier for potential users to find your project.
Documentation contributions are very welcome! The best way to send contributions is as emails through the mailing list.
