Hi Chris, some additional thoughts to what Antoine said. Neal
On Wed, Jul 8, 2020 at 10:56 AM Antoine Pitrou <anto...@python.org> wrote: > > Hi Chris, > > Le 08/07/2020 à 12:01, Chris Channing a écrit : > > > > I've looked at the contribution guidelines, but rather than arbitrarily > > picking a jira I was hoping that there was a more structured approach for > > newbies documented that I might have missed. A few questions that I have > > are: > > As a starting point, which Arrow implementation would you be interested > in contributing to? As you know, we have a bunch of them, a subset of > which has its status documented here: > https://github.com/apache/arrow/blob/master/docs/source/status.rst > > > - Does the community have a light-weight style mentoring system to > help > > contributors get up to speed? > > We don't. However some developers are used to communicate on an > unofficial chat instance at https://ursalabs.zulipchat.com/, where you > can also ask for help (you probably want to post on the "dev" stream). > Most new contributors tend to be users who encounter a limitation of the software (or docs) and take it upon themselves to improve it. So one way to get orientation is to start using Arrow and ask specific questions when you run into trouble. > > > - Are there designated component owners/guardians e.g. C++ core, > Flight, > > Gandiva, API's etc that could provide guidance if a developer had a > > specific focus/interest? > > We don't have designated owners, though of course some developers are > focussed on specific areas. Best is probably to ask here, though. > Also, the answers you get can benefit other people. > > > - Looking at the Arrow jiras in bulk, I noticed that 'easyfix', > > 'beginner' and 'newbie' labels have been defined. Do you think that it > > makes sense to pick one label and standardise on it for future backlog > > grooming efforts? It would make it easier to identify the pipeline of > > issues that future engineers can use to ramp up on the project. > > Definitely agreed. I'm not sure how easy it is to make bulk edits on > JIRA, though... perhaps someone else can chime in. > Unfortunately, JIRA "labels" are shared with all of the Apache Software Foundation, so those aren't just for Arrow. I don't observe that we use them but maybe some people do, and maybe we should start. In general though, rather than just looking for "easy" things to do, I recommend finding a JIRA issue you're personally invested in seeing resolved because it affects a use case you have. I find that's a more effective way to learn in general. > > By the way, one thing were fresh eyes would definitely be useful is to > suggest documentation edits or improvements. > We also have a small website revamp in preparation, you can see the > proposed changes in the links below. Feedback is welcome :-) > https://github.com/apache/arrow-site/pull/63 > https://enpiar.com/arrow-site/ > > Regards > > Antoine. >
