Additional References

NHibernate Forge

NHibernate Forge can be found at http://nhforge.org; it is the central point of information on all things related to NHibernate. Here you will find announcements for new versions, blog and wiki posts, and links to official API reference documentation. Unfortunately, it’s not always up to date but it’s still a valuable source of information.

NHibernate Reference

NHibernate Reference is the ultimate source of information on the NHibernate usage and configuration. You can find it at http://nhforge.org/doc/nh/en.

NHibernate Validator Documentation

Find the reference documentation for NHibernate Validator at: http://nhforge.org/wikis/validator/nhibernate-validator-1-0-0-documentation.aspx.

NHibernate Users

It may well happen that you’ll face problems when using NHibernate or that you just won’t know the best way to do something. In this case, one place you can turn to is the NHibernate Users community, which is available as a mailing list that’s hosted at Google Groups (which offers a web interface: https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups#!forum/nhusers). Here, you will find many users who work with NHibernate on a daily basis and who may be able to help you.

NHibernate Development

If you ever need to contact the NHibernate authors to discuss the implementation of NHibernate, there is the NHibernate Development community, also hosted at Google Groups: https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups#!forum/nhibernate-development. You won’t typically find solutions to your immediate problems here but, instead, you may learn from the conversations between the developers or you can discuss features with the people who actually built them.

NHibernate JIRA

NHibernate JIRA at https://nhibernate.jira.com is the place to go for filling bug reports, suggesting improvements, or looking up existing issues. If you are going to submit a bug report, please include the maximum amount of detail possible and make sure you carefully fill in all fields with appropriate values.

27. JIRA Interface

Even better, include a simple unit test that demonstrates the problem you are facing. You will find guidelines on writing good unit tests on this wiki post: http://nhforge.org/blogs/nhibernate/archive/2008/10/04/the-best-way-to-solve-nhibernate-bugs-submit-good-unit-test.aspx. A test project is available at http://nhforge.org/media/p/70.aspx.

NHibernate Source Code

NHibernate source code is available on GitHub at https://github.com/nhibernate/nhibernate-core.

NHibernate Validator Source Code

NHibernate Validator source code is also available on GitHub and maintained by Dario Quintana (@darioquintana) at https://github.com/darioquintana/NHibernate-Validator.

NHibernate Pitfalls Index

I keep my own list of common NHibernate pitfalls and recommendations on my blog at http://weblogs.asp.net/ricardoperes. Have a look and share your thoughts, questions, and corrections.

Contributing to NHibernate

Once you get familiar with NHibernate, including its source code, you may feel that you can bring something new to NHibernate, either by fixing existing bugs or by implementing new functionality. That is good because NHibernate is the product of a community of people who think that way. You are free to try and contribute to it. To do so, you must follow these steps:

26. Create an account on NHibernate JIRA if you don’t already have one.
27. Create an issue for what you are trying fix or improve, if one does not already exist (including a unit test that illustrates the situation).
28. Read the Contributor Guide available at https://github.com/nhibernate/nhibernate-core/blob/master/Contributor%20Guide.html.
29. Fork the nhibernate-core repository from the GitHub web interface:

28. Creating a Pull Request

30. Clone the forked source code to your development machine from the command line:

29. Cloning a Repository

31. Run ShowBuildMenu.bat and select option A for setting up the development environment:

30. Setting Up Initial NHibernate Development Environment

32. Make changes to the code and make sure you don’t break anything.
33. Commit your changes from the command line:

31. Committing Changes

34. Create a pull request from the web interface and fill in all required values:

32. Creating a Pull Request

35. Go to the JIRA issue and add a comment to it where you mention your proposed solution and the location of the pull request:

33. Mentioning the Pull Request on a JIRA Issue

36. Wait for someone on the NHibernate team to pick it up, test it, and merge your changes with the trunk.