A.M. Kuchling wrote: > FWIW, I have a related perception that we aren't getting new core > developers. These two problems are probably related: people don't get > patches processed and don't become core developers, and we don't have > enough core developers to process patches in a timely way. And so > we're stuck. > > Any ideas for fixing this problem?
I think that there's a barrier entry: there's no place to ask for help on silly problems when you're trying to help (!). Let me explain my bad english wording, with an example. Yesterday night I started modifying socket.py and test_socket.py. "Of course", I said, "let's see if the tests pass ok *before* start changing anything". Went to ~/devel/reps/python/trunk/Lib, and made: $ python2.5 test/test_socket.py ... Wrong! Damn! Tried a lot of stuff... $ cd test $ python2.5 test_socket.py ... Wrong! $ python2.5 regrtest.py test_socket ... Wrong! $ python2.5 regrtest.py test_socket.py ... Wrong! $ python2.5 regrtest.py socket ... Wrong! And thousand more combinations. The best I could do is actually execute the tests, but python was getting the installed socket module, and not the repository socket module (even that I was in the same directory of the latter). I didn't know what to try. I was stuck. This never happened to me when working on Decimal. What went wrong in my head in the middle? I finally understood the problem, and build python from the repository, and made the tests from *this* python (actually, this was an easy step because I'm on Ubuntu, but *I* would be dead if working in Windows, for example). Ok. *Me*, that I'm not ashame of asking what I don't know, if I didn't resolve it I'd finally asked in python-dev. But how many people would have throw the towel withoug getting so far? How many people want to submit a patch, or even a bug, or finds a patch to review, but don't know how to do something and thinks that python-dev is not the place to ask (too high minds and experienced people and everything)? What I propose is a dedicated place (mailing list, for example), that is something like a place where you can go and ask the silliest questions about helping in the developing process. - How can I know if a patch is still open? - I found a problem, and know how to fix it, but what else need to do? - Found a problem in the docs, for this I must submit a patch or tell something about it? How? - I found an error in the docs, and fixed it, but I'm spanish speaker and my english sucks, can I submit a patch with bad wording or I must ask somebody to write it ok? Me, for example, has an actual question to this list: "How can I know, if I change something in the doc's .tex files, that I'm not broking the TeX document structure?". Just my two argentinian cents. Regards, -- . Facundo . Blog: http://www.taniquetil.com.ar/plog/ PyAr: http://www.python.org/ar/ _______________________________________________ Python-Dev mailing list Python-Dev@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-dev Unsubscribe: http://mail.python.org/mailman/options/python-dev/archive%40mail-archive.com
