Developer Documentation

How can I contribute

• Contribution HowTo

• Using Git for Samba Development

• Doing code review

• Active projects

Release planning

• Samba release planning (including the Policy and steps required for checkins to branches)

• Samba Features added/changed (by release)

• Samba Next Goals

Source code

Samba development is stored in the Git SCM system. See Using Git for Samba Development for more detail on how Samba uses Git.

Two web interfaces are:

• Samba's own GitWeb (latest changes in the master branch)
• Official Samba GitLab Mirror

Samba is no longer actively developed on GitHub but for reference and to keep old code from being mistakenly examined, the Offical Samba Team GitHub Mirror is kept up to date.

Samba codebase organization

Broadly speaking, the Samba source-code tree can be organized into the following major groups:

• Top-level libraries, which contains common code shared amongst the Samba processes.
• Source3, which is code primarily used by the file server and domain member.
• Source4, which is code primarily used by the Active Directory Domain Controller.
• Infrastructure components, which provide the build and test framework for Samba.
• Autogenerated code, which is used for parsing DCE/RPC packets as well as other regularly structured buffers.

The Samba codebase is broken down in detail in the Samba codebase organization page.

Debugging / Testing

• The Samba Selftest System

• Samba CI on gitlab

Writing and running Samba tests

• Writing Torture Tests

• Writing Python Tests

• Writing cmocka Tests

• Writing Shell Tests

• Writing Perl Tests

• Testing against Windows using WinTest

• Understanding make test

Debugging help

• Keytab extraction

• Wireshark with keytab to decrypt encrypted traffic

• How to test the Linux kernel client against Samba

• Saving packets that failed to parse to test IDL fixes using ndrdump

• Debugging in Python

Development testing

• Testing removal of #ifdef or configure checks
• Information on Samba's fuzzing infrastructure

Bug reporting

• Bug reporting HowTo

• Packet capturing

Security

• Samba Security Documentation
• Samba Protocol Security Layers

Presentations

• Presentations about Samba, including slides and papers

VFS

• Writing a Samba VFS
• The new version of Writing a Samba VFS (for Samba 3.6 and earlier)
• Writing a Samba VFS Module (for Samba 4.0 and above)

Clustered Samba

• Samba on Scale

• CTDB and Clustered Samba

• New clustering features in SMB3 and Samba

Building Samba

• How to build Samba from source

• Using waf to Build Samba

Building packages

• Building Debian Packages of Samba 4

Google Summer of Code

• Google Summer of Code

• Samba SoC page

• SoC Samba project ideas

Historical Documentation on the Development of Samba4

• Samba4 DRS ToDo List

• Samba 4 Status

• An Explanation of the s3fs Architecture for Using smbd in the AD Server

• Development Resources

• Test Status

• Gtk+ Frontends

• Active Directory Plans

• Samba 4 AD Plugfest 2010 TODO List

• Development Releases of Samba4 (technology previews, alphas, betas, release candidates)

Prehistoric documentation from the Samba3 development era

• Samba Developers Guide

Academic Writings etc.

• GENSEC white paper (2005)

• Thesis on Samba (2005)

• Thesis on Samba replication (2007)

• Integration of Samba 3 & Samba 4 (2005)

• Thesis on Talloc (2012)