Hi all,
On 5/31/2017 1:12 AM, Mark Thomas wrote:
On 31/05/17 04:07, Coty Sutherland wrote:
I've been thinking about things that we could do for Tomcat to help
bring in new contributors and to be more appealing to new developers.
https://helpwanted.apache.org/
I would like to offer the perspective of the "new contributor" here. I,
for one, would love to contribute and be more involved with the Tomcat
project, and I believe that thanks to Tomcat's popularity there are many
out there just like me.
As a new contributor, the most important thing is to get some feedback.
The "worst" thing from a new contributor's perspective is that he/she
will put much time into work that will never be looked at, and all that
time will go to waste.
We understand that not all contributions will be accepted, and that they
must adhere to the standards set by the project. We also realize that
this is open source, and that the people who review the submission are
usually volunteers who do the best they can in the time that they can
afford to contribute to the project.
We still need, however, to get some feedback on our submitted work in a
timely manner before we can try again, or submit some other work.
Take for example the PRs on Github (sorry, but SVN feels like the 1980s
-- great time for partying, not so much for writing code -- and I know,
ironically the SVN project started in 2000, but I digress):
https://github.com/apache/tomcat/pulls
Anyway, there are PRs there from a few months ago, all the way to a
couple of years ago. The really old ones should be closed IMO, and
suggest to the contributors to submit again if the issue(s) are still
valid. The newer ones should be evaluated and feedback should be given
to the contributors You already "found" new contributors -- better
spend some time "cultivating" them than look for new ones who might end
up stuck in that same situation.
The most recent PR ATM -- https://github.com/apache/tomcat/pull/56 -- is
from me, and it's only been a few days, so normally I wouldn't have said
anything at this point because it hasn't been "long enough" since I
submitted it. But then I saw this email and it made perfect sense for
me to chime in.
It was very important for me to keep my PR as small and simple as
possible, so that it's easy to review and accept or reject. But there
is no feedback whatsoever. I usually have more time to contribute on
the weekends, so if I'll get some feedback soon, I will hopefully be
able to implement whatever changes necessary on the weekend. If not,
then another week goes by.
Anyway, I really am not complaining here. Just providing a perspective
from "the other side".
All the best, and keep up the good work!
Igal
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