Proposal: Learn To Package Week

[Mel Chua]

Dear Classroom list: Aaron Clark had an idea at this past FUDCon.

http://iwrotecode.blogspot.com/2009/12/future-fudcon-hackfest-request.html

Proposal: Learn To Package Week (New Years' Resolution Special Edition), 
January 4-10, 2010.

One tricky package walkthrough per day, of something we're trying to get 
packaged, hopefully with upstream listening in on the session to resolve 
licensing, etc. issues as they pop in, followed by ~2h of "open lab" 
time where learners can work on their own packages while "teaching 
assistants" lurk in channel.

The big blocker is finding teachers - the reason everybody interested in 
this (http://blog.melchua.com/2009/12/07/zikula-hackfest/#comment-3812) 
so far is interested is because we want to be the students - we need to 
learn this stuff ourselves. We're willing to be guinea pigs and do the 
logistical/organizing stuff, but we inherently Can't Teach These Classes.

Thoughts? How do we put this together? How do we find people to teach?

--Mel

[Kevin Fenzi]

On Wed, 16 Dec 2009 00:06:50 -0500
Mel Chua <mel(a)redhat.com&gt; wrote:

>  Dear Classroom list: Aaron Clark had an idea at this past FUDCon.
>  
>  http://iwrotecode.blogspot.com/2009/12/future-fudcon-hackfest-request.html
>  
>  Proposal: Learn To Package Week (New Years' Resolution Special
>  Edition), January 4-10, 2010.
>  
>  One tricky package walkthrough per day, of something we're trying to
>  get packaged, hopefully with upstream listening in on the session to
>  resolve licensing, etc. issues as they pop in, followed by ~2h of
>  "open lab" time where learners can work on their own packages while
>  "teaching assistants" lurk in channel. 
I think it's pretty difficult to get upstreams interested in joining an
irc packaging session. I could be wrong, but most projects will need to
involve their community in any changes they make, especially licening,
so they may not be able to just make changes right then. 

>  The big blocker is finding teachers - the reason everybody
> interested
>  in this
>  (http://blog.melchua.com/2009/12/07/zikula-hackfest/#comment-3812) so
>  far is interested is because we want to be the students - we need to
>  learn this stuff ourselves. We're willing to be guinea pigs and do
>  the logistical/organizing stuff, but we inherently Can't Teach These
>  Classes.
>  
>  Thoughts? How do we put this together? How do we find people to teach? 
well, you could ask on the fedora-devel list for folks, or ask on the
planet in a post? 

I'd be happy to help out, but we should also setup a more exacting
schedule. When does this start and end each day? Who is teaching each
day and on what? Or is it more of a workshop than a class? 

Just a few thoughts... 

kevin

[Shakthi Kannan]

Hi,

---On Wed, 16 Dec 2009 00:06:50 -0500 Mel Chua <mel(a)redhat.com&gt; wrote:
|
| Dear Classroom list: Aaron Clark had an idea at this past FUDCon.
|
| http://iwrotecode.blogspot.com/2009/12/future-fudcon-hackfest-request.html
|
| Proposal: Learn To Package Week (New Years' Resolution Special
| Edition), January 4-10, 2010.
|
| One tricky package walkthrough per day,
\--

I made a packaging RPM presentation to get people started with some
basics of RPM .spec file and the tools used.

You could try it from here:
http://shakthimaan.com/downloads/glv/presentations/packaging-red-hot-pane...

The sources are available at:
http://shakthimaan.com/downloads/glv/presentations/packaging-red-hot-pane...

This is an old IRC log of the session:
http://www.shakthimaan.com/downloads/irclogs/2009/2009-07-02_mbuf_packagi...

It does not cover packaging for specific modules or languages though,
but, it could get you one step closer to this.

This gives you an overall view of the process:
http://shakthimaan.com/downloads/glv/howtos/packaging-rpm-workflow.html

Regards,

SK

-- 
Shakthi Kannan
http://www.shakthimaan.com

[Kevin Fenzi]

On Wed, 16 Dec 2009 00:06:50 -0500
Mel Chua <mel(a)redhat.com&gt; wrote:

>  Dear Classroom list: Aaron Clark had an idea at this past FUDCon.
>  
>  http://iwrotecode.blogspot.com/2009/12/future-fudcon-hackfest-request.html
>  
>  Proposal: Learn To Package Week (New Years' Resolution Special
>  Edition), January 4-10, 2010. 
Any further news on this? We are getting close to this timeframe... 

Let me know if there is anything further we can do from the classroom
side of things. 

kevin

[Mel Chua]

On 12/28/2009 03:38 PM, Kevin Fenzi wrote:
>  On Wed, 16 Dec 2009 00:06:50 -0500
>  Mel Chua<mel(a)redhat.com>  wrote:
>
> > Dear Classroom list: Aaron Clark had an idea at this past FUDCon.
> >
> > http://iwrotecode.blogspot.com/2009/12/future-fudcon-hackfest-request.html
> >
> > Proposal: Learn To Package Week (New Years' Resolution Special
> > Edition), January 4-10, 2010.
>
>  Any further news on this? We are getting close to this timeframe...
>
>  Let me know if there is anything further we can do from the classroom
>  side of things. 
Thanks for the ping, Kevin - in retrospect, right before the holiday 
season may not have been the best time to start planning this. We've got 
interested people but no firm commitments for doing specific things at 
specific times on specific days.

What we need are people to step up to be the point person for arranging 
a class and "lab hours" on each of those 5 days. This doesn't require 
any packaging knowledge (you can be a student organizing a class you 
want to take) and involves 2 things:

1. find a teacher - someone who can walk people (on gobby and IRC) 
through the collaborative construction of a single working spec file for 
something that needs to be packaged; arrange a time for class, announce 
it, publicize it, and get people to come, and make sure the class is 
documented afterwards ("link to logs from the wiki page").

2. schedule "lab hours" - at least 2 consecutive hours of time after 
class with at least 1 experienced packager in an IRC channel able to 
field questions from new packagers, and a list of packages that new 
packagers can pick up and start working on.

If you want, you can pick a theme for your day - one could imagine Fonts 
Day, Blogs And Associated Plugins Day, Cloud Day, etc.

Holler if there's anything I can do to explain this better, or if 
someone has a better logistics-wrangling arrangement to propose, or 
wants to get together a day, or knows a packager who'd be willing to 
teach one of these days.

--Mel

Roster so far:

Monday: Mel Chua - web frameworks and CMSes (topic is tentative, needs a 
teacher!)
Tuesday:
Wednesday:
Thursday:
Friday:

[Kevin Fenzi]

On Tue, 29 Dec 2009 03:08:16 -0500
Mel Chua <mel(a)redhat.com&gt; wrote:

>  On 12/28/2009 03:38 PM, Kevin Fenzi wrote:
>  > On Wed, 16 Dec 2009 00:06:50 -0500
>  > Mel Chua&lt;mel(a)redhat.com&gt;  wrote:
>  >
>  >> Dear Classroom list: Aaron Clark had an idea at this past FUDCon.
>  >>
>  >> http://iwrotecode.blogspot.com/2009/12/future-fudcon-hackfest-request.html
>  >>
>  >> Proposal: Learn To Package Week (New Years' Resolution Special
>  >> Edition), January 4-10, 2010.
>  >
>  > Any further news on this? We are getting close to this timeframe...
>  >
>  > Let me know if there is anything further we can do from the
>  > classroom side of things.
>  
>  Thanks for the ping, Kevin - in retrospect, right before the holiday 
>  season may not have been the best time to start planning this. We've
>  got interested people but no firm commitments for doing specific
>  things at specific times on specific days. 
Yeah... might be wise to push it out a bit and try and firm out the
schedule?

>  What we need are people to step up to be the point person for
>  arranging a class and "lab hours" on each of those 5 days. This
>  doesn't require any packaging knowledge (you can be a student
>  organizing a class you want to take) and involves 2 things:
>  
>  1. find a teacher - someone who can walk people (on gobby and IRC) 
>  through the collaborative construction of a single working spec file
>  for something that needs to be packaged; arrange a time for class,
>  announce it, publicize it, and get people to come, and make sure the
>  class is documented afterwards ("link to logs from the wiki page").
>
>  2. schedule "lab hours" - at least 2 consecutive hours of time after 
>  class with at least 1 experienced packager in an IRC channel able to 
>  field questions from new packagers, and a list of packages that new 
>  packagers can pick up and start working on.
>  
>  If you want, you can pick a theme for your day - one could imagine
>  Fonts Day, Blogs And Associated Plugins Day, Cloud Day, etc.
>  
>  Holler if there's anything I can do to explain this better, or if 
>  someone has a better logistics-wrangling arrangement to propose, or 
>  wants to get together a day, or knows a packager who'd be willing to 
>  teach one of these days. 
Well, I would be happy to hang around and help with lab hours as time
permits, but I am working at dayjob, so I might be busy. 

kevin

[Mel Chua]

> >>> Proposal: Learn To Package Week (New Years'
> Resolution Special
> >>> Edition), January 4-10, 2010.
> >>
> >> Any further news on this? We are getting close to this timeframe...
> >>
> >> Let me know if there is anything further we can do from the
> >> classroom side of things.
> >
> > Thanks for the ping, Kevin - in retrospect, right before the holiday
> > season may not have been the best time to start planning this. We've
> > got interested people but no firm commitments for doing specific
> > things at specific times on specific days.
>
>  Yeah... might be wise to push it out a bit and try and firm out the
>  schedule? 
I was thinking January 18-22 if we have to push it out, since the first 
week (4-8) will probably be "catch up from the holidays" week for a lot 
of people.

--Mel