Does Proxmox accept external contributions/patches for projects such as PDM?

Tacioandrade

Renowned Member
Sep 14, 2012
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Vitória da Conquista, Brazil
Hello everyone,

I've been using Proxmox since around 2013 and, over the years, I've participated in the community through the forums, Bugzilla, and other channels.

Recently, I've been considering contributing directly to the project, particularly to Proxmox Datacenter Manager (PDM). There are a few features currently listed on the PDM roadmap that would be very useful for one of my own environments, and rather than relying on third-party tools, I'd be interested in implementing some of them myself and contributing the changes upstream.

Currently, I manage more than 10 small Proxmox clusters, as well as several standalone Proxmox hosts, and I'm using PDM to get a centralized overview of these environments.

Recently, we had an issue at one customer where a VM was created but was never included in any backup policy. Because of this, I'd like to implement a Backup tab in the Remotes view, based on the "backup-job overview" item currently listed on the PDM roadmap.

My initial idea for the overview would be something like:

NameGuestsGuests without backup policy
cluster-a423
cluster-b180
When selecting a remote, the right-side panel could display:
  • Configured backup jobs/policies
  • Node, storage, schedule, mode, and current status
  • Guests covered by each backup job
  • A filter/button such as Show: Guests Without Backup Job
  • A list of guests that are currently not covered by any backup job
The main goal would be to quickly identify VMs or containers that were created but accidentally left without backup coverage.

Before spending time implementing this, I'd like to know whether this kind of external contribution would be considered for inclusion in PDM.

If so, is there any specific contribution workflow, coding guideline, development documentation, or best-practice policy that external contributors should follow before starting the implementation?

I'd prefer to align the implementation with the project's architecture and expectations from the beginning rather than develop something that would require major changes before it could be accepted upstream.

Thanks in advance for any guidance.
 
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I believe most if not all of your questions about coding are covered here: https://pve.proxmox.com/wiki/Developer_Documentation
Thanks a lot! I’ll go through the documentation and see if I can contribute to the project.

I probably don’t have the experience needed to work on lower-level components, such as KVM patches or similar things, even though I have a Computer Science degree. But for higher-level Rust development and features like this one, I think I should be able to help.