Thank you for contributing to Buildbot!
What appears below is just a quick summary. See http://trac.buildbot.net/wiki/Development for the full story.
Please file tickets for any bugs you discover at http://trac.buildbot.net. It is not necessary to file a bug if you are preparing a patch.
See http://trac.buildbot.net/wiki/SubmittingPatches for the details.
Your contribution must be licensed under the GPLv2, and copyright assignment is not expected. See http://trac.buildbot.net/wiki/LicensingYourContribution for details.
You should run common/validate.sh before sending your patches.
Also you can install our git hook for validating and fixing most common coding style issues
cp common/hooks/post-commit .git/hooks
Buildbot's code-review process is described at http://trac.buildbot.net/wiki/PatchReview. The important point to know is that Buildbot requires a positive review (adding the "merge-me" label) before a change is eligible to be merged. While we try to perform reviews in a timely fashion, if your review has lagged for a week or more please do feel free to nag us in whatever way is easiest for you.
The easiest way to hack on Buildbot is in a virtualenv. See http://trac.buildbot.net/wiki/RunningBuildbotWithVirtualEnv for a description of how to set up such a thing.