[Gluster-devel] Initiative to increase developer participation

[Niels de Vos]

On Thu, May 29, 2014 at 11:08:34PM -0400, Pranith Kumar Karampuri wrote:
> hi,
>     We are taking an initiative to come up with some easy bugs where 
>     we can help volunteers in the community to send patches for.
> 
> Goals of this initiative:
>  - Each maintainer needs to come up with a list of bugs that are easy 
>    to fix in their components.
>  - All the developers who are already active in the community to help 
>    the new comers by answering the questions.
>  - Improve developer documentation to address FAQ

Documentation in the wiki, mainly these pages:
- http://www.gluster.org/community/documentation/index.php/Main_Page#Developers
- http://www.gluster.org/community/documentation/index.php/Developers

>  - Over time make these new comers as experienced developers in 
>    glusterfs :-)
> 
> Maintainers,
>      Could you please come up with the initial list of bugs by next 
>      Wednesday before community meeting?

If we mark bugs with the EasyFix keyword (see below), all bugs can get 
listed with a simple Bugzilla query:
- https://bugzilla.redhat.com/buglist.cgi?bug_status=NEW&keywords=EasyFix&product=GlusterFS

> Niels,
>    Could you send out the guideline to mark the bugs as easy fix. Also 
>    the wiki link for backports.

To mark a bug as Easy to Fix, open the Bug, and add in 'EasyFix' in the 
'Keywords' field. Of course, it would help any newcomer if there is 
a comment on where (i.e. which source file, function) the changes are 
needed. For example, https://bugzilla.redhat.com/1100204 contains 
a clear description what is needed, and where.

For the stable branches (release-3.4 and release-3.5 in the git 
repository), it often is needed to 'backport' a change from the current 
development branch (master). Backporting is for many changes relatively 
easy and we have started to document the steps here:
- http://www.gluster.org/community/documentation/index.php/Backport_Guidelines

The "Backport Wishlist" is a list of patches/bugs that are proposed 
candidates for backporting. When a backport request has been filed, 
a bug for this backport and the release-version should be created.  
Depending on the change, the EasyFix keyword could be set by the person 
creating the bug (or by a developer or sub-maintainer after a review).

> PS: This is not just for new comers to the community but also for 
> existing developers to explore other components.
> 
> Please feel free to suggest and give feedback to improve this process 
> :-).

And, as a reminder, anyone that is interested in trying to write 
a patch, do not hesitate to ask questions. If something in the 
documentation is unclear, we do need to know so that we can improve it.  
Furthermore, I am of the opinion that there hardly exist stupid 
questions, and it's more stupid to not ask questions that others can 
easily answer. Always assume that if you have a question, someone else 
would like to hear the answer too :-)
Reach out to the developers in #gluster or #gluster-dev on Freenode IRC, 
or on one of the mailinglists, try to keep the discussions public so 
that anyone can learn from it.

Thanks,
Niels