Re: [gnome-love] Guidance for a newbie?

[MArk Finlay <finlaym eircom net>]

On Fri, 2002-09-13 at 21:12, Elijah P Newren wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I've recently decided to spend some spare time and donate back to
> Free/Open Source software since I've gotten so much out of it.  I
> thought GNOME would be a good place to start, though I'm not sure what
> part of GNOME to start on.

Read this http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html ;)

 
> I'm still a linux newbie, but I have been programming for a number of
> years.  Mostly I've used C/C++, but I have some *basic* familiarity
> with other languages (pascal, x86 assembly, matlab, fortran, perl,
> Tcl/Tk, and even scheme).  Since most of my programming was
> self-taught, I'm highly ignorant of tools and skills used in group
> projects (though I tend to know the names of some, such as CVS).  I'm
> also sure that I have large holes in my programming knowledge that
> formal training or a more focused learning method may have covered
> better.  I would like to learn, though...

That's more than i have ;)

> I'm hoping to have about 5 hours per week, maybe more if I can, but
> I'll shoot for 5 hours.  One possibility that looks interesting is to
> make gnome-terminal have a "tabbed terminal" similar to Mozilla's
> tabbed browsing.  I even found this link:
> http://www.gnome.org/todo/view.php3?id=40.  However, I know that I
> personally tend to drop large projects without good motivation unless
> I first get some successes behind me on smaller tasks that are
> similar.  So I don't want to take on the tabbed terminal project if
> it's going to take me too long (say a month or so to at least get an
> alpha version).  But I really can't tell how long that project would
> take.

This is a bit out of date - there has been the gnome-multi-terminal for
a while and now the main gnome terminal supports tabs as well. So yeah ,
there goes that idea.

> So, I guess I have multiple questions: What are some simple tasks that
> I might be able to do, just to get some accomplishments under my belt?

Fix some bugs on bugzilla - see if you can get onto the list of top
bugfixers ;)

> Will I first need to have GNOME2 on my system (I'm planning on
> upgrading to Mandrake 9 soon)? 

To develop for the gnome desktop you generally need to be running the
latest and gratest - unless you are programming for an app. I would
suggest GARNOME


 Anyone have some *wild* guesses on how
> long the "tabbed terminal" project might take?  And, the overall
> question: Does anyone have some good pointers on how to become an
> effective contributor to GNOME?

check out developer.gnome.org - read the archives of gnome-love - read
havocs website http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html - lurk
on loads of mailing lists - get to know the gnome desktop and the
project and how it works - DONT start a project - start small

Personally i would suggest that you drop by #rhythmbox on irc.gnome.org
and take a look at www.rhythmbox.org - it's a great program and the guys
working on it are realy cool.

-- 

         .--= [ MArk Finlay - finlaym{AT}eircom{DOT}net ] =--.