Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

If you're familiar with JIRA, you can create a bug report at http://kenai.com/jira/browse/KENAI. You can also report bugs on the Project Kenai Bugs forum at http://kenai.com/projects/help/forums/bugs. When you report a bug, please make sure you always include the Project Kenai revision number in the post. The current revision number can be found at the bottom right of every page on the site, just after the Copyright notice. It also helps if you provide as many details and reproduction steps as possible.

For this beta release, project creation is by invitation only. To get an invitation, you can click the Request Project Creation button on your My Page, then describe your project in the dialog and send the request to the Project Kenai team. When you receive an invitation email, click the link in the email body to create your first project. You will also be able to send three invitations to friends and colleagues to enable them to create their own projects. To send an invitation, click the link to the left of the Create Project button on your My Page.

If you've been invited to create a project, for the first project, you need to click the link in the invitation email. For subsequent projects, you log in and go to either My Page or the Projects page, where you click the CREATE PROJECTS button. For more information, see Creating a Project.

The Project Kenai home page has a list of featured projects at the bottom of the page. This is a place to start. To look for more projects you might be interested in, click the Projects tab to go to the Projects page, where you can:

• Page through the alphabetical list of projects.
• Browse the projects on the Most Recent Projects tab.
• Use the project search field to find projects by name.
• Use the filtered list of project tags in the left navbar to find projects by type, such as jruby. If you want to see the entire tag cloud, click All Tags at the top of the tag list.
  
  

When you find a project that sounds interesting, click the project name to go to its home page, and then you can read its wiki, forums, and email archives, view its source code, and download builds to try them out. If you like the project and think you might like to participate, the next step is to join as an observer. See the next question for more information about joining a project.

If you want to get involved with a project, first bookmark the project, then get involved on its forums, email lists, and bug tracker.

1. You can click Bookmark This Project on any project's home page and become a project member with limited observer status. The project and its most recent forum posts will then show up on your My Page, and your registration will be visible to other members of the project when they click the number to the right of Members: on the project home page. Some projects also prevent nonmembers from accessing project features like downloads and source code, so you have to become an observer to use these project features.
2. If you want to get involved as a developer, first sign up as an observer, and then start connecting with other members of the project in the project's forums or mailing lists. Get to know how the project is being worked or managed. Once you get to know everyone, ask one of the project administrators for a higher role in the project like Software Developer or Content Developer.

You only need an invitation to create a project. We're doing this to keep things a little more under control while we bring the Beta site up to speed. You do NOT need an invitation to register on the site and get involved with an existing project. Jump in and get going.

If you have a project you'd like to host on Project Kenai, you can click the Request Project Creation button on your My Page and describe your project on the Request Project Creation form. This form is sent to kenai-admin@sun.com. If you prefer to email directly, make sure you let us know what kind of project you want to host here.

Another way to get an invitation is to get to know some of the project administrators for existing projects. When they were originally invited to create projects, they all got extra invitations they could give out.

There's currently no automated way to send out emails to all the folks you want to invite to join your project. You have to create and send that email yourself. After your friends get the email, here's what they do:

1. Sign up for an account on kenai.com.
2. Send email to you with the username they used when signing up.

You can then open your project page, click Manage This Project, and, on the Members tab, add them to your project and give them appropriate roles in the project. For more information, see Managing a Project.

When you change your email address in your Profile Settings (as described here), two emails are sent out: one to your old email address notifying you that this change was made to your profile, and a verification email to your new email address with a link to activate the new address. When you click the link and verify the new address on kenai.com, it shows up in your profile.

When you change what your users can do with one of your source control repositories (as described here), because of the way we cache this information, it takes a while for the changes to propagate. Give your changes 15 to 30 minutes to take effect.

You can ignore this message. It's an issue with OSX, which doesn't have our certificate on its list of root certificates. See this help topic: Ignore the Adium Verify Certificate Message.

When doing a push to your Mercurial repository, if you get messages like, "abort: error: Software caused connection abort", your push has timed out. Instead of using HTTPS protocol, use SSH to do your updates. Not only is SSH more secure, but it is faster. Before using SSH with Project Kenai, you have to generate an SSH key pair and save the public key to the SSH Keys tab in your user profile. For more information on generating SSH keys, see Generating an SSH Key.

Git and Mercurial require an email address when you check code in, and they store the email in the repository. You can change your email address in your Git or Mercurial preferences to one that you don't mind sharing. For example, you could set your email to your-username@kenai.com, or you could use a temporary alias.

Let's start by saying that Project Kenai, while in beta mode, is fully functional. There's still a long list of additional features we'll be bringing online. Once we believe we're feature rich, we may pull the "Beta" tag. Stay tuned for what new features are coming down the road!

Now, onto the question at hand: Project Kenai vs. Java.net? Several years ago Sun was looking to provide a "place" where developers passionate about Java technology could interact. This idea became Java.net, a place leveraging a 3rd party infrastructure for the collaboration/hosting features.

In that time, technology has been moving at the speed of light, often times in areas outside of Java. The question for Sun became, "What can we offer to developers using new languages/new technologies in regards to hosting projects and collaboration, as well as ourselves participate in this new ecosystem that falls outside of Java?" The answer is Project Kenai. It allows developers using ANY language a place to host their open source project. Also, since we've created the infrastructure, we can be much more agile with what new features/services we offer to Kenai members.

At the end of the day, it's all about your own personal choices. Java.net is still a very useful destination for parties interested in accelerating the advancement of Java. I'd suggest taking a look at the features that Project Kenai and Java.net offer to determine which one fits YOUR needs.