Becoming a participant is very easy. The only thing that is required is to be interested in OpenJDK and, as a minimum, participate in discussions on mailing lists. Participants can ask OpenJDK members to add code into the code base, but they can't do it themselves. Contributors, however, have a more involved role, These people can submit patches and have more influence on the project.
To get ready to follow this recipe is easy; all that is required is a desire to become a participant. It is important to understand that it is not a quick process and can easily take several weeks or even months. So, be patient and do not give up.
As preparing a patch requires running the Kron shell script, a machine needs to have that shell installed. If a Windows machine is used, then Cygwin is required on the system.