Re: choosing a Debian Package to learn to package
ti, 2008-12-02 kello 12:35 -0800, Maria Nelson kirjoitti:
> Any suggestion on how I can go about picking a package to learn to
> package?
The reason it is often suggested you work on packages that you use
yourself is that this gives you motivation to keep working on the
package. However, it is not a necessary condition and especially for
learning purposes, you can pick any package you wish. A few notes:
* Especially for learning, pick any package that interests you, whether
you currently use it or not. That's really the only important issue: do
you want to work on it or not?
* Simple packages are easier to learn on. You can move to more
complicated packages later. For example, you might start with a simple
command line tool, and then move onto a GUI program, since GUI programs
often have more complicated dependencies and are harder to build
correctly.
* You might ask to join a team that maintains a package, or a set of
related packages. You should probably start by offering patches for
review by the team before joining it (where "join" implies commit access
to the team's version control repository). Working with a team means
it's easier to find a sponsor and to get reviews and feedback on your
work.
* If you don't find a suitable team, try to find one or two people
willing to sponsor your uploads on a continual basis, since it's easier
on you than finding a new sponsor every time. (Perhaps people on
debian-women would be willing to volunteer for this? We had a
debian-women specific mentoring thing going on in the early phases.)
* If you don't find any package to adopt for your own, you might instead
choose to work on some particular package and a specific problem or
aspect on it, and then move on to the next package. The benefit of this
is you get a lot wider experience with different kinds of software and
different styles of packaging. Eventually you will find something that
appeals to you and you can take that under your wings.
Reply to: