Re: contribution

[Jean-Philippe MENGUAL <jpmengual@debian.org>]

    Hi Patrick,
    
    Many thanks for your message and welcome in the Debian community.
    
    As a distribution, Debian has 2 big needs: packaging existing source
    packages, and programming some internal tools.
    
    As the community is small, and debian maintains more than 5000
    packages, the work is enormous.
    
    Perhaps you could try two directions then, to discover Debian and
    choose your preferred action focus:
    1. Packaging some packages needed by a team specialized in some
    aspect of Debian: for example, accessibility team would like to
    package some packages, see TODO packaging
    https://wiki.debian.org/accessibility-devel
    
    You could do the same with any team, provided that you are
    interested in the topic or the tools it maintains. Typically, if you
    use a desktop or a server, perhaps you think "hmm this package is
    useful and not in Debian", and could join the team related to the
    server/desktop to take their opinion and propose your help in doing
    this.
    
    2. Helping for an internal team: for example, see the TODO of the QA
    team.
    
    3. Dealing with bugs: a last approach consists in choosing a team
    and/or a/some package(s) and examining bugs against them. You could
    then help the responsible team or maintainer to determine wether the
    bug is still relevant, should be forwarded upstream, or fix it and
    proposing a patch (to Debian or to upstream then will back to
    Debian). This approach can affect packages or internal tools such as
    the package manager, etc.
    
    The 3rd approach makes you do some code quickly. The two first ones
    make you introduce to teams, proposing a topic of contribution from
    their todo or bug list, and learn how the packaging works (from a
    template, the doc, etc).
    
    Note that the most important is to establish a human relationship
    with the team or the maintainers you intend to help. Never do
    something without their agreement, it would be useful most time. You
    could do a package alone (from the orphan list or inserting a new
    one), but the process may be long and less exciting than working
    with a team, because you will need a mentor, then a sponsor, etc.
    
    tell us if you have further questions and how we can help you
    furthermore.
    
    regards
    
    
    
    
Jean-Philippe MENGUAL

Le 28/08/2019 à 15:38, PATRICK HERMANN ZEUFACK a écrit :

Hello, my name is Patrick Zeufack, a young Cameroonian, computer science student. I work since the beginning of my studies with the debian distribution. and I would like you to accept me to the community. to contribute to the project,I think that will allow me to know more about open source and help me improve my level of programming. I program in java, python c and typescript.