Michael Sullivan wrote:
I would like to help with coding/debugging packages for Gentoo. I have
some programming experience on a very small scale. I have an Associates
of Computer Science from a small community college, and I've never had a
job working for a software company. You spode of "good enough skills";
I don't think I have good enough skills to help with Gentoo, but I'd
like to. Where should I start?
Just to expand on everything that has already been said, here is my input.
It sounds like you don't have any specific area of interest in mind, but
you are keen on the principles and want to contribute to the community.
So, the first thing you need to do is pick something moderately specific
to get involved in, since packages are divided by category and roles are
divided by projects, etc. The choice is fairly arbitrary but go for one
that you have some kind of knowledge and interest in. For example, if
you once did a college project evaluating different kinds of encryption,
you might choose to get involved with the crypto packages. If you have
some kind of uncommon hardware which needs its own out-of-kernel driver,
firmware, or userspace utility then look into packages in that area. If
you have a large music collection and spend a lot of time keeping it
organised, pick the media-sound package group.
And realistically your initial choice might not hold for very long, but
that's fine. As long as you pick an area to start in, and you see it
through the recruitment process, then you'll have found some footing and
can move around and branch out later. At the moment I spend a lot of
time maintaining and fixing the kernel in Gentoo. I was not even doing
anything comparable to this when I originally became a developer. I am
currently also involved upstream developing drivers and fixing bugs in
the mainline kernel sources, and I certainly didn't have any knowledge
of how to go about this when I originally joined Gentoo development.
At some point you'll start finding some bugs which you can diagnose if
not solve fully (diagnosis is often harder than fixing up the code). Or
you'll find a personal itch that you are capable of scratching, so
you'll be motivated to get involved in a very specific project (and you
won't have the "what can I do" problem you have now).
If this makes any sense to you, send me a list of software or areas that
you might be interested in offlist, and I'll look into getting you in
contact with appropriate people.
Daniel
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