Hi!
Let me introduce myself first. When I started contributing to KDE with
the beginning of this year this was the status:
* No experience in C++ at all
* Wtr coding: No experience in collaboration and the technologies involved
* No experience in many other things
<https://phabricator.kde.org/T7116#122877>
* Good javascript knowledge
* Hobby developer
since then:
* arcanist hater (that's reciprocal)
That did not keep me from being active: 14 commits this month.
To the point. Baloo:
I think baloo is fantastic! I'm a heavy user of metadata to organize my
media (audio, video, ebooks) and I love how it integrates into the desktop.
As a result I know many of the kinks of the packages involved and want
to improve them. Baloo is in the centre of it.
The "low hanging fruit"-phase will soon be over for me. Very soon I'm
going to really tackle the bear (why is baloo called baloo anyway?).
That is challenging. Time to roll-up my sleeves. BUT! Neither can I nor
do I want to do this alone. Currently there are only 2 (two) regular
committers to baloo, James Smith and me.
Sadly baloo has no maintainer. I would take on that task if were more
experienced, but for now that wouldn't be reasonable and also would
issue a wrong message. I intend do it when I feel ready for it and it
still is a necessity.
"The bear must live". This is a non-exhaustive list of things I need in
the meantime:
* Reviewers. Many of my submits for baloo have been lingering on for
days without reaction. (OK, I'm impatient. But please don't make
poking on #kde-devel a regular element of my workflow.)
* Critique! I want you to look at my code and be harsh with it.
* Guidance. Old code, new code, styles, dependencies ... KDE code is
like a jungle to me. In coding I usually learn best by looking how
others have done it, analyze and adapt or adopt. With KDE code that
often times doesn't work out for me. E.g. I haven't been able to
derive rules for string handling "otto", 'otto',
QStringWhatEver("otto") or what? Or CMakeFiles: a horror! Also
testing strategies, very diverse...
There is no critique inherent to this list, not at all. *You are helpful*!
The list of what I want is not really a list:
* @Community Admins: Baloo project page?
So here's my *plea*:
If you are an experienced C++-programmer and know the KDE code-base
well, please watch the things the two of us doing for baloo, criticize
me, and first of all: *become a reviewer* for the requests targeted at
baloo or baloo-widgets, please! Help me keep the pace!
Thank you for reading all this,
Michael
