Re: I want to contribute to debian
Hi,
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 25/09/2019 à 18:06, Apoorv Srivastava a écrit :
> Hello,
>
> I wanted to get started with contribution to Debian. I am
> completely new to open source and am thinking to start my contribution
> in c or python, I am a first year undergraduate so I don’t have much
> advanced knowledge about either of the two languages but I am eager to
> learn. If you can help me get started it would be a great help.
>
> Looking forward to start contributing to Debian.
>
> Thanking you,
>
> Yours Truly,
>
> Apoorv Srivastava.
>
>
>
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