Re: This is pretty weak. [re: getting new blood]

[Luis Villa <louie ximian com>]

On Sat, 2002-04-20 at 11:49, Luis Villa wrote:
> -----Forwarded Message-----
> |
> | From: Luis Villa <louie ximian com>
> |
> | BTW, for those without copies of the code,
> | http://developer.gnome.org/tools/cvs.html has some good instructions for
> | getting started with GNOME CVS. 
> 
> So, that's the best I could come up with last night for a 'getting
> started with GNOME programming' URL. If we're going to attract new
> hacking blood, as discussed at the BOF at guadec, we've just got to have
> better getting started docs, pointing at stuff like any gtk tutorials we
> have, the HIG guidelines, this CVS page, etc. Unfortunately, I'm
> completely unqualified to write such a page myself :/ but I hope someone
> who is will take the time. We badly need new hackers and something like
> this can help make that happen. Or at least that seemed to be the
> consensus at the BOF...

So after some poking... I found a lot of links, but none of them are
particularly prominent on the web site, or even accessible from there.
And they ought to be. :)

More than anything else:
http://developer.gnome.org/ needs to have 'getting involved' big and at
the top of the page, not buried at the bottom. Ditto for
http://developer.gnome.org/dotplan/ .

Some links:

http://developer.gnome.org/documents/joining-gnome/index.html [Really
good bit by Dan Mueth; ought to be more prominent on the web site and
could maybe use a bit of reorganization in the format- maybe even split
in to 'joining for hackers' and 'joining for non-hackers.']

http://developer.gnome.org/doc/guides/programming-guidelines/book1.html
[coding guidelines. Good stuff for newbies but you have to go to the
docs page to find it.]

http://www.gnome.org/~chema/gnome-love/compiling_faq.html [again, great
stuff that ought to be linked to directly from the 'getting involved'
page and also from http://developer.gnome.org/tools/cvs.html]

Essays on hacking, gnome and otherwise:
http://mail.gnome.org/archives/gnome-love/2001-May/msg00105.html
http://www106.pair.com/rhp/hacking.html
http://www.advogato.org/article/22.html
http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html [good points for
newbies coming to a list]

Anyway, I've filed this against the website in b.g.o but I also thought
it was worth sharing here. We've /got/ to give thought to getting new
hackers into the project, and I think that (at least partially) has to
start with the website and with feedback from hackers who are already
involved.

Luis