A list for discussion of "Darcs Advanced Revision Control System".

wren ng thornton | 1 Aug 2008 22:56

Re: poll: how can we help you contribute to darcs?

Eric Kow wrote:
> Dear Haskellers,
> 
> I would like to take an informal poll for the purposes of darcs
> recruitment.  Could you please complete this sentence for me?
> 
>    "I would contribute to darcs if only..."
> 
> The answers I am most interested in hearing go beyond "... I had more
> time".  For instance, if you are contributing to other Haskell/volunteer
> projects, why are you contributing more to them, rather than darcs?

...I knew how to help (and had the time).

The You Too Can Hack on Darcs blog series is a really good idea. One 
problem many open-source projects suffer from is it not being apparent 
how a new hacker would even begin to start working. An overview of how 
the project is set up along with some notice about how malleable the 
different parts are goes a long way.

It can also be helpful to take some RFI and walk through implementing 
the change, testing that it hasn't broken anything, and sending the 
patch (don't forget this step :). A follow on about getting ideas from 
the bug tracker is also good. Sometimes hands-on documentation is the 
best kind. Also documenting how a ninja developer could drop in, fix 
some things, and leave before anyone noticed is a good way to snare the 
folks who'd like to help a little but don't want to get dragged into 
being a regular developer (yet). Try-before-you-buy contributing is one 
of the best ways to get regular developers.

(Continue reading)

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Ferenc Wagner | 4 Aug 2008 13:04

Re: [darcs-users] poll: how can we help you contribute to darcs?

wren ng thornton <wren <at> freegeek.org> writes:

> [Bug trackers are an excellent source of tasks for active developers to 
> use so things don't get lost, but they're awful for new developers. For 
> someone just joining the project it's rarely clear how important a task 
> is, how hard, or how far reaching its consequences (or whether someone's 
> already working on it). Good trackers have fields to note these things, 
> but the notes are engineered for active developers; the extent to which 
> those notes are even used or accurate varies wildly from project to 
> project. Hence, having a clear discussion about what things really are 
> important and how much they interact with everything else is a great boon.]

Agreed.  In short, shouldn't Darcs come up with sth like
http://wiki.winehq.org/JanitorialProjects or
http://janitor.kernelnewbies.org/ perhaps?

And of course with some serious up-to-date documentation on the theory
behind Darcs.  AFAIK Ian Lynagh started working on one.  I'd say:
first be precise.  Don't be afraid of abstract algebra, it's
university material, quite some people actually understands it.  And
those can later explain the hard to grasp parts.  But I never felt
like diving into the bunch of hazy metaphors I found about the inner
workings of Darcs, even though I was and still am interested.  So I
nevert felt qualified to touch anything important or assess the
performance problems for example.
--

-- 
Cheers,
Feri.