JavaRosa is an open source project and is available under the Apache 2.0 license.

In order to submit patches, contributors must sign an agreement, in which they give over their copyright to the foundation that manages the licensing of the project. These agreements are available for Individuals and Corporations. Agreements are required before patches are approved.

All new code submitted to the JavaRosa project must be code reviewed and approved by the project's core committers. The process is as follows.

1. A developer clones http://bitbucket.org/javarosa/javarosa and makes changes to the code base.

# cloning trunk
hg clone http://bitbucket.org/javarosa/javarosa;

# editing files
vi MyClass.java;

# adding useful message
hg commit -m "Changing MyClass";

2. Once the developer finished development, they must prepare the code for review. If there are new files, you must merge and commit the changes. If there are conflicts, they must be resolved.

# ensuring latest files from trunk  
hg pull http://bitbucket.org/javarosa/javarosa;
                                               
# if there are new files, merge and commit changes
hg merge tip;
hg commit -m "Merging new files";

# if there are conflicts, edit the files and resolve
vi MyClass.java;
hg resolve -m MyClass.java;
hg commit -m "Resolving conflicts";

3. Push the patch to http://code.javarosa.org/hg/javarosa-incoming. It must be a singular revision on the 'default' branch and you must try to create a remote head. For reasons explained below, your code will be automatically rejected if you do not follow these rules.

# assuming repo is up to date, create remote head and push only one revision
hg push -f -r default http://code.javarosa.org/hg/javarosa-incoming

• Ensure you are up to date. You must merge with the latest code from trunk before submission.

• Use the 'default' branch. This is Mercurial best practice and it prevents trunk from being polluted.

• Create remote heads. Every patch currently under review is a separate head in this repository so patches do not block. Use the -f switch on the command line or the force push checkbox in TortoiseHg.

• Push one revision at a time. This protects against accidentally pushing code that is not meant for review. Use the -r switch on the command line or the target revision field in TortoiseHg.

• The code can only advance one head at a time. If you have unrelated patches on multiple heads, push them separately.

4. Once the new code is accepted, it is available in http://code.javarosa.org/hg/javarosa-incoming. An automated email will be sent to core committers notifying them of the new patch. You can browse http://code.javarosa.org/hg/review/list for the list of all pending patches.

5. The reviewer may recommend changes which must again be pushed into http://code.javarosa.org/hg/javarosa-incoming for more review. Once the reviewer is satisfied, they will approve the patch.

6. The patch will be tagged and the code will automatically be moved into http://bitbucket.org/javarosa/javarosa.