I’m getting to the point where I consider myself fairly comfortable with
Ruby. I love the way the language works, I’ve used it to solve some
fairly
complex problems, and I’m working on developing several different
websites
with various people (some of which will see the light of day, some of
which
never will). Through all of this I’m learning more and more about Ruby,
and
especially about how great the community is. There is a HUGE group of
people working on developing core libraries, willing to lend a hand
through
the list or the irc chat, and sprouting sub-projects of sub-projects of
projects.
What I want to know is: how do I become part of this core community?
Right
now I feel like I’m sitting on the outside, watching all this amazing
development going on, and I have no idea how to get involved myself.
I’d
like to become part of a project and lend my time and as-yet meager
abilities back to the community that’s helped me out so much, but I
don’t
have any idea where to start at. Should I try to become involved in a
rubyforge project? Should I just hunt down some random project’s Trac
and
start making fixes and submitting them?
Is there a place where people can go to recruit others for their
projects?
If there isn’t, should it become my project to develop one?
What I want to know is: how do I become part of this core community? Right
now I feel like I’m sitting on the outside, watching all this amazing
development going on, and I have no idea how to get involved myself. I’d
like to become part of a project and lend my time and as-yet meager
abilities back to the community that’s helped me out so much, but I don’t
have any idea where to start at. Should I try to become involved in a
rubyforge project? Should I just hunt down some random project’s Trac and
start making fixes and submitting them?
I wouldn’t say you should hunt down some “random” project to
contribute to, but yeah, if there’s a particular Ruby-related project
that really interests you, ask how you can help. If you’re a good
writer, ask if you can help write some documentation for the project;
I can almost guarantee with 100% accuracy that the answer to that
question will be “Yes”. When you discover a bug, or a potential bug,
in a library, don’t just send a terse message to the mailing list
saying “It’s broken” – submit a good bug report that tells how to
reproduce the problem, providing sample code whenever possible. (Even
better, submit a patch that fixes the problem).
As the Ruby community has grown over the last year or so, there has
been a large influx of people who are glad to take but not especially
interested in giving back. It’s good to hear from someone like you who
doesn’t fall into that group.
Is there a place where people can go to recruit others for their projects?
There’s the “Project Openings” (a.k.a. Help Wanted) section at
RubyForge,
and
reproduce the problem, providing sample code whenever possible. (Even
better, submit a patch that fixes the problem).
As the Ruby community has grown over the last year or so, there has
been a large influx of people who are glad to take but not especially
interested in giving back. It’s good to hear from someone like you who
doesn’t fall into that group.
Another, relatively simple simple, way is to try to keep an eye on
ruby-talk and answer questions.
If we can maintain the spirit of “returning the favor”, we’ll do well
and keep the community healthy.
–
James B.
“Every object obscures another object.”
- Luis Bunuel
Should I try to become involved in a
rubyforge project? Should I just hunt down some random project’s Trac and
start making fixes and submitting them?
Start with a project (on rubyforge or elsewhere) that you have used.
Write tests for issues you find, or for issues on that project that
don’t have tests. Write a fix that makes one of the failing tests
pass. Submit. (At least, that worked for me.)
In message “Re: Community involvement”
on Tue, 6 Feb 2007 23:51:59 +0900, “Tech G.” [email protected]
writes:
|What I want to know is: how do I become part of this core community?
You mean the core development of the Ruby interpreter, right?
Subscribe ruby-core list. Read source code of the interpreter. Post
ideas, opinions to the list. Submit patches to fix bugs.
And (I think) you will find yourself participating the core
development.
matz.
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