[Sugar-devel] prerequisite skills for contributing code (was Re: [Dextrose] [PATCH v4 sugar] Pulsing icon delayed by 5 seconds or so SL#2080)

[Simon Schampijer]

On 10/13/2010 12:08 PM, James Cameron wrote:
> On Wed, Oct 13, 2010 at 03:29:19PM +0530, Manusheel Gupta wrote:
>> Sure, SEETA developers are going through the following training and patch
>> submission workflow -
>>
>> 1. Revision/learning of Python, PyGTK skills through algorithms and programs;
>>
>> 2. Studying Sugar manual, and getting familiar with using the emulator and
>> jhbuild;
>>
>> 3. James Simmon's guide on activity development (I do agree that this was not
>> done for initial developers. But, every new developer is asked to study it);
>>
>> 4. Patch workflow and documentation on code reviews;
>>
>> 5. Asking the team members to go through certain patches accepted upstream, and
>> submitted by Sascha, you and other team members;
>>
>> 6. Assignment of bugs and initial discussion with Aleksey and Bernie;
>>
>> 7. Submission of test patches in-house for peer review before submission to
>> sugar-devel/dextrose/usr mailing lists;
>>
>> 8. Final submission.
>
> Good list of tasks.  However, perhaps there should be more assessment
> along the way.  We're seeing people start step 8 either carelessly or
> without underpinning knowledge from earlier steps.
>
> I suggest assessment by peers as well ... it can be quite effective.

I think having teaching as well in a group is an important step. The 
developers should review the patches of each other. That should happen 
before the patches are hitting the other developers. You can do that 
already on the list if you want. The ones that have already managed to 
successfully submit a patch should start to train the others.

And the feedback you get from the reviews should be spread in this group 
and should be made available to others, either by adjusting your 
internal guides or by contributing back to the main guides and help out 
refining them where needed.

Regards,
    Simon