Hi folks, Based on some recent (and long-term) experiences, I wanted to discuss with the community what we could do to lower the barrier of entry to using & contributing to NiFi. I hope to get some good feedback from both long-time and newer members, and determine some immediate concrete steps we can take.
Problems identified: * NiFi has a number of custom profiles, so a simple “mvn clean install” in project root doesn’t get a new developer up and running immediately * The API is very well defined, but for new contributors, it can be a challenge to know where to put functionality, and building a custom processor + NAR and deploying isn’t a one-step process * Project size (and build size/time) is large. This can restrict the minimum hardware necessary, elongate the development cycle, etc. * Some new users do not receive mailing list replies Possible solutions: * On a clean git clone, “mvn clean install” should build a working instance. Maybe we provide a quickstart.sh script to handle the default maven build, change to the target directory, and start NiFi? * Individual contributors have written excellent blogs, and documentation exists, but making it more prominent or more easily accessed could help? * Extension registry will solve all the world’s problems (related to bundling and build time) * Not sure about this one — I don’t know if it’s because they’re not subscribed, their mail client is blocking them, etc. I’ve said my bit, now I am eager to hear from other community members on their experiences, steps that helped them, and suggestions for the future to continue to make the NiFi community welcoming to new users. Thanks. Andy LoPresto alopre...@apache.org alopresto.apa...@gmail.com PGP Fingerprint: 70EC B3E5 98A6 5A3F D3C4 BACE 3C6E F65B 2F7D EF69
