Alec Teal <a.t...@warwick.ac.uk> a écrit:
> I'd love to help with GCC, without documentation (in fact, without
> instructions) I have no hope of doing so. Maybe instruct/ask people to
> do stuff?
If I may propose something, I think a reasonable way of starting is to
pick an (easy) bug from bugzilla and try to fix it. You can start with
an internal compiler error that happens in a front end, for instance.
Look at the code in the debugger from the point where it crashes. Step
through it while compiling a simple test case to understand what it's
doing. Oh, and do all that while having and IRC client not too far;
connect to irc.oftc.net#gcc, and do not hesitate to ask people about
parts of the code you don't understand. My experience here is that
there are *many* people who are *very* friendly and willing to help in
the GCC (I'd say GNU Tools in general) community.
And hopefully, once you understand that part of the code that is
precisely not well documented enough, you'll be able to propose patches
to the documentation.
You can also subscribe to bugzilla emails and try to reproduce the bugs
people file, help reduce their test cases, triage (and comment on) the
bugs. This task is utterly appreciated, and with time, that helps you
get a better sense of how things are organized, and can provide you with
an itch to scratch, so much that you'll start diving into some part of
the code sooner than you'd have otherwise expected.
Cheers, and please do not be impressed by the size of the code. Like
for an elephant, I guess you can eat it one spoon at a time.
--
Dodji
