On 30/06/2011 20:19, Timo wrote: > On 30-06-11 14:12, Dieter Verfaillie wrote: >> In short, don't be afraid to get your hands dirty :) > In response to this, I'm actually willing to help out, but...
Hard questions to answer. So, I've been using PyGTK for years and decided to do something about the situation of PyGTK on Windows at the end of last year. I think that piece of work was reasonably well received and that motivated me enough to try and get the gi stack working, also on Windows. That said, I consider myself nothing more than a user, but have decided to contribute what and when I can as long as it is fun to do so. So from that point of view, here goes: > What skills are needed? Depends on what you want to achieve, really. I'd say any kind of help is going to be more than welcome. Be it helping people on this or other lists, documentation (a real sore point with the new introspected bindings), demos/examples, fixing bugs, new features, making things work on currently unsupported platforms, tools that can help with any of the above, etc. Any of those requires a different skill-set, but you don't have to be "the world's expert" on any specific topic to be able to help. Observe and learn as you go, that's what I'm doing ;) The most basic skill would be to know how to submit a patch for review, I guess. That's documented here: https://live.gnome.org/GnomeLove/SubmittingPatches > Should I have some specific knowledge? That again depends on what you need or want to do. But don't let the lack of knowledge in a certain area scary you into not doing anything about it. Just try and should it break, take a step back, learn and try again! Heh, for example: my first "autotools" related patch was described as "interesting" by the hacker then reviewing it. Looking at it now, 6 months later, I can say: "Yeah, correct, my patch was completely worthless!". Embarrassing? Sure! Oh-no, it's recorded for all eternity on bugzilla/mailinglist/whatever! Who cares? I'm still grateful for the review and in the long run, it wasn't time that went wasted as I'm more comfortable with Makefile.am's and what-not to try and help out getting the glib/gi/pygobject stack working on Windows. > And if I can help, where should I start? The question is never *if* someone can help. The hard part is the *where to start*. A good set of questions to ask yourself, known as "the scratching an itch technique", could be: Is there something with the current state of things that bugs you? Have you looked at why it bugs you? Are you willing to put time into figuring out how you can make it stop bugging you? If you've got a yes on each question, you've found the perfect place to start! Some examples of things I've noticed or thought about but haven't had the time yet to get my hands dirty on (being busy trying to get the gi stack working on Windows): - Compare PyGobjects [1] with PyGTK's [2] demo directories. There are still things missing. Maybe even compare with gtk-demo from GTK+. I'm sure we're lagging behind in some of the demo's. This might be an excellent area to get started? - I've played with the idea to check if (ab)using Python's lib2to3 could be used to create an improved pygi-convert script... - PyGTK has stellar documentation, but the documentation fragments embedded in the .gir files (taken from the C sources and also used in the GTK+ reference manual) can be terse at times. Can we reuse/rewrite parts of what we have in PyGTK and put it in GTK+ before it has bit-rotted beyond being useless? Everybody using GTK+ would benefit, not only us PyGObject users! - Revive the tutorial, PyGObject style. But don't try to be an encyclopedia on every widget in existence or risk it being abandoned again. And maybe make it easier to contribute to by using something Python hackers are more familiar with like Sphinx instead of docbook xml? - Take a look at http://sourceforge.net/projects/girlook and see how it can be made easier to use? - ... With a little bit of imagination, there's enough that can be done to fill several lifetimes! But be careful not to lose motivation when nobody answers a question, looks at the patch you carefully crafted and attached to a bug report, etc. Instead, be grateful when someone does take the time to actually do so. Remember, most (if not all) people involved with these projects are doing so in their own free time! mvg, Dieter [1] http://git.gnome.org/browse/pygobject/tree/demos/gtk-demo/demos [2] http://git.gnome.org/browse/pygtk/tree/examples/pygtk-demo/demos _______________________________________________ pygtk mailing list [email protected] http://www.daa.com.au/mailman/listinfo/pygtk Read the PyGTK FAQ: http://faq.pygtk.org/
