[darcs-devel] Contributors: Getting Started?

Ryan Lowe ryan at audioman.org
Fri Oct 8 13:19:49 PDT 2004


Hi David,

I've been following the darcs mailing list for a little while and 
noticed you might need some help with bugfixes.  I've never programmed 
in Haskell, but I'm relatively strong in other languages, especially 
Java, and I have a Software Engineering university degree (not that it 
matters much in the FLOSS community). :)

While considering whether or not to start contributing to this project 
I was looking around for some development information, but couldn't 
find any on the web site, wiki or mailing list.  Maybe you can answer 
these questions for me, or just point to a rundown of the general 
procedures...

1. Is everything coordinated on the mailing lists?

2. If not, is there a bug database somewhere?

3. Is there developer documentation?

4. Is there a release schedule or roadmap?  How do enhancements and 
fixes get prioritized?  How do you ensure two people don't work on the 
same bugfix?

5. Is there a procedure or preconditions (ie. unit testing) for 
submitting patches?

It may be that all of these things are just informal and learned as a 
new developer comes online, and I'm nearly expecting that for a project 
of this size.  I can handle that no problem, but I was just wondering 
if there was anything to read beforehand (I've gone through the manual, 
but besides the source code) to save some time so I don't have to waste 
your time asking too many noob questions. :)

Particularly, I'd be interested in reading a general SCM document on 
branching to get me up to speed in that area.  I have the general idea 
of it, but when the branching discussion took place on the user list I 
found my eyes glazing over with all of the moving of patches between 
branches and all of the different types of branches (trunk/HEAD, 
release, dev, etc) and how to organize/manage them, along with 
versioning.  It might be useful to be on the same page.  I guess this 
is something that people just pick up over the years and after a while 
becomes common knowledge.  I'm not at that point yet.  :)

Cheers,

Ryan Lowe





More information about the darcs-devel mailing list