Date: Mon, 1 Dec 2008 00:38:16 -0200 From: Gonzalo Nemmi <gnemmi@gmail.com> To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Cc: Tim Kientzle <kientzle@freebsd.org> Subject: Re: keeping track of local modifications Message-ID: <200812010038.16064.gnemmi@gmail.com> In-Reply-To: <4932E8CF.9040501@freebsd.org> References: <4931CB02.9070904@gmail.com> <4932E8CF.9040501@freebsd.org>
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On Sunday 30 November 2008 5:26:07 pm Tim Kientzle wrote: > Eitan Adler wrote: > > As an aside can anyone point me to a relatively easy bug/feature that I > > can work on as a beginner C coder? > > There are thousands of such; could you narrow it down > a little bit? Are you interested in kernel hacking? > Device support? Core libraries? Networking? Utilities? > Porting? > > There are a couple of idea pages floating around and > many discussions in public mailing lists, blogs, and other > places: > > * Search the source code for "TODO" or "XXX" to find > comments about things that could use cleaning or > improvement. As a bonus, these usually comment things > that someone thinks should be done, so you might have > a little easier job selling your solution. > > * Search the web for "FreeBSD GSoC" or "FreeBSD Summer of Code" > to find ideas that are intended to be 3-month projects > targeted at student-level developers. You'll find links > both to past projects (a fair number of which are still > not yet entirely completed; maybe you could help?) and > web pages and mailing list discussions about possible > future projects. > > * Search the web for "Junior Kernel Hacker" for other > ideas that people have come up with over the years. > > * Go to FreeBSD.org and skim the mailing list archives > to find ideas and see what problems people are having. > hackers@ and current@ are good starting points, some > of the more specialized lists can also be interesting > reading. You might find problems that you can solve > yourself or you might find an ongoing project that > could use a little help. Projects like FreeBSD work best > when there are several people working on any given area. > > Of course, how a lot of people get involved is simply > to install and use FreeBSD for a little while, and find > something that doesn't seem quite right: > * a hardware device on your system that's not fully supported? > * a utility that doesn't work the way you think it should? > * an application that doesn't run on FreeBSD as well as it > does on some other platform? > > In my case, I'd used FreeBSD for many years, decided I didn't > like the installer (still don't, by the way) but found that > writing a new installer was too big a project for the limited > time I had available. So I cast around and found my niche > working on archiving tools. (Maybe Ivan Voras is interested > in having help with his finstall project?) > > As you figure it out, it's usually a good idea to ask > on mailing lists (hackers@ is good) or IRC to see if > other people are encountering the same problem or if > someone is already working on something. That kind of > discussion can help you get more complete background > on a particular problem, including approaches that other > people have tried or even partial code for fixes that > were never completed. (There's a lot of interesting > bits sitting around people's hard drives that are > worth the effort to study, test, and fix.) > > Perhaps most importantly, by talking about your > work-in-progress, you have a better chance of connecting > with a committer who will help get your work into the > tree. A lot of excellent ideas never make it into > FreeBSD because the author never talked to anyone > until they were "done" and the result couldn't really fit > into FreeBSD correctly without a lot more work. > > On this latter point, it can help to read carefully > through old commit logs, study past work in that area, > and ask questions specifically of developers who have > done work in that area. (Though it's usually better to > ask first in a public forum like hackers@ or current@; > individual developers are sometimes very busy or on > vacation or just slow to respond for various reasons.) > > Most importantly, have fun and remember that most of us are > volunteers who enjoy using and working on FreeBSD in our (often > quite limited) spare time. On the one hand, that sometimes > makes us slow to answer: If I only have a couple of hours > a week, I'd usually rather spend it coding than typing > long answers to questions that people could answer themselves. > On the other hand, it also means I enjoy talking about FreeBSD > and sometimes get carried away writing overly-long email > epics with lots of detail about stuff that noone really > cares about. <grin> Eitan cares and I do too ... Thanks a lot for your _really_good_ email :) -- Blessings Gonzalo Nemmi
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