IMHO the tests you need to run before submitting a patch, that is suites.All and derbyall, take too long to run.
Actually, I don't think there are *any* tests that you *need* to run before submitting a patch, assuming that by "submitting" you mean "attaching the patch to a JIRA issue".
Dan's comment in the issue that Kathey mentioned is particularly worth reading carefully regarding this: https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/DERBY-1116#action_12370592 In my opinion, any interested user should feel free to attach a patch to a JIRA issue at any time, hopefully with comments explaining what the patch is and why the community might be interested. Running tests is certainly nice, but I think we should make the bar for getting involved as low as possible. Considerable additional information is available at http://wiki.apache.org/db-derby/PatchAdvice and http://wiki.apache.org/db-derby/IncrementalDevelopment thanks, bryan
