Home | Back | Contents | Next

# Learning More

BeanShell is a simple tool but one with rapidly evolving capabilities. To learn more about BeanShell you are highly encouraged to download the source and build it (using the Ant build file). Even if you don't consider yourself a developer, you can learn a lot from the source distribution by looking at the implementation of the standard BeanShell commands and the test suite.

Almost all of the built-in BeanShell commands are simply scripts stored in the BeanShell JAR file under the path "bsh/commands". A good way to familiarize yourself with more of BeanShell is to take a look at those commands. Simply unpack bsh/commands/*.bsh from the JAR file. The BeanShell test suite consists of many BeanShell scripts that exercise all parts of the language.

In addition to the mailing list and mailing list archives, an important source of information is the "recent changes" file supplied with the source distribution and online at: http://www.beanshell.org/Changes.html. This file is one of the few documents that is always up to date with the latest release (smile).

## Helping With the Project

BeanShell is an open source project which relies on people like you to get things done. If you are excited about BeanShell there is undoubtedly some way for you to help. If you are a developer, there is always work (sometimes boring, sometimes not) to be done. If you are not a developer you may still be able to help by writing new tests for the test suite, or working on the documentation, web site, tutorials or examples.

Here are some things that we can always use help with:

- Tests for the test suite - We need more tests! BeanShell relies heavily on its test suite to guarantee that changes don't break subtle aspects of the language. Often tests are added for specific bug cases (Developers: please add a test for any bug you fix!). But it would be best if tests were generalized to cover all of the "corner cases" too.
- Bug fixes - Check the bugs list at the sourceforge site and dig into the code. Some bug fixes are easy, some are deep. Feel free to contact me (pat@pat.net) directly if you want help getting started on an issue.
- Docs - We can always use articles, documentation and examples.
- Integration and third party tools - Have you integrated BeanShell into another tool or environment? Let us know and we'll link to your site.
- Feedback from the World - Despite BeanShell's relative popularity you would be amazed at how little information we have about who is using the tool and how. If you are using it or you know people using it please let us know!

Home | Back | Contents | Next