Hey, We used to say that a good way to start contributing to the Apache NiFi project was to submit a PR with a new bundle to interact with a new technology or create new components. However, with NiFi 2, we've seen that having many of these modules creates significant ongoing work for the active maintainers (security vulnerabilities, version upgrades, etc.), and we’ve become much more selective when it comes to accepting PRs that introduce entirely new components and new dependencies.
While this is completely understandable, I believe it has made it a bit harder for someone looking to become a contributor to the Apache NiFi project — or for an existing contributor to build a track record of contributions toward committership. We do have a well-established process for submitting new features [1], and we maintain Confluence pages listing feature ideas that have been discussed in the past and would be valuable additions to NiFi someday [2][3]. Those pages could definitely use an update to better reflect the project’s current priorities. That said, building a new feature is not an easy starting point for someone trying to get familiar with the NiFi project. It’s always possible to pick up reported bugs [4] and submit fixes, but I think it’s also important for us to take a broader look at the project’s technical debt. Maintaining a list of technical debt items could provide additional opportunities for new contributors to engage with the project and build meaningful contributions. With that in mind, I’ve created a new Confluence page [5] with an initial list of technical debt items that I think could be good entry points for contributors. I’d love to hear your thoughts. Additionally, we could start another discussion thread to revisit and refresh the list of new features we’d like to prioritize for NiFi (support for additional schema formats, dynamic load balancing, dynamic virtual threading, etc.). Thanks, Pierre [1] https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/NIFI/NiFi+Improvement+Proposal+Process [2] https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/NIFI/NiFi+Feature+Proposals [3] https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/NIFI/Product+requirements [4] https://issues.apache.org/jira/issues/?jql=project%20%3D%20NIFI%20AND%20issuetype%20%3D%20Bug%20AND%20resolution%20%3D%20Unresolved%20ORDER%20BY%20key%20DESC%2C%20priority%20DESC%2C%20updated%20DESC [5] https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/NIFI/Technical+Debt+TODO+list
