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

[Tacioandrade]

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:

Name	Guests	Guests without backup policy
cluster-a	42	3
cluster-b	18	0

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.

 

[bbgeek17]

Hi @Tacioandrade ,
I believe most if not all of your questions about coding are covered here: https://pve.proxmox.com/wiki/Developer_Documentation

As for the goal alignment, that is a more appropriate discussion for PDM list here: https://lists.proxmox.com/postorius/lists/

---

Blockbridge : Ultra low latency all-NVME shared storage for Proxmox - https://www.blockbridge.com/proxmox

 

[Tacioandrade]

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.

 

[Lukas Wagner]

Hi!

One of our team members is already working on a backup job overview. I cannot provide an ETA for the feature right now, but it will come eventually. I'll be sure to forward the list of desired features you provided to the developer who has been working on this.

For now, I'd suggest waiting for the initial integration of the feature (to avoid double work), and then once it's there, we'd be more than happy to receive feedback, polishing and further enhancements from you, if you're interested.

In general, were more than happy to receive your contributions on the mailing lists. The relevant developer documentation was already shared by @bbgeek17, but feel free to ask here or on one of the mailing lists if you have any further questions about the process.

For any larger feature, such as this one, it's best to discuss the feature first on the mailing list, just to ensure that one is heading into the right direction right from the start.

Thanks!

 

[Tacioandrade]

Thanks a lot for the update! Since this is already being worked on, implementing it separately would just mean duplicated effort.

For now, I’ll stick with the small shell script + dialog solution I already have, which basically does the same thing in a text-based interface.



I’ll keep an eye out for updates, and over the weekend I’ll also take a closer look at the mailing list to see if there’s anything I might be able to contribute to.