Improving our processes for new contributors.

[Przemek Klosowski]

On 07/11/2015 08:40 PM, Les Howell wrote:
> 	I have experience in coding and design of projects in more than 20
> languages and 9 operating systems.  But always as support for existing
> systems, and always as tightly coupled code (basically every thing I
> wrote ran in real time with multiple hardware pieces interacting.)
> I have zero experience with COPR or repository systems in general, and
> have only used RCS's systems a few times because I am basically  an
> independent contractor in terms of the support of customers, and as such
> most companies are hesitant to give a contractor access to their
> specific networks and systems.  Also there are many different RCS's out
> there and I don't have time in most real world applications support
> positions to learn extra stuff aside from the requirements directly
> affecting the support (think of writing a 12,000 line program with real
> time support in less than 10 weeks, and also doing the hardware design
> and development in an additional 2-3 weeks, along with researching about
> 1200-1500 pages of device and support documentation.)
> 	I talk about all this because when you have someone who is interested,
> and even motivated enough to get involved, where does one go to learn
> the accepted techniques and support systems as a total newbie to the
> process?  Do you have a link to an educational process?  Are people
> greeted and provided links and encouragement?  Where and who knows the
> requisite information to get started?
>
> 	I have personally given up on the idea of contributing directly, but
> there are others out there that you might capture if the tools and
> introduction are good.
I do understand where you're coming from: the Fedora workflow is quite 
complicated and learning it sometimes feels like drinking from a 
firehose. Moreover, the setup evolves and sometimes one ends up drinking 
from the wrong firehose :).

When I looked into packaging, I found extensive documentation but very 
few tutorial-style materials. I like the hands-on approach so I wrote a 
'user story' about packaging a simple project: 
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/How_to_create_a_GNU_Hello_RPM_package

I think this is a good approach, and could be extended to describe a 
complete submission process (adding the package in COPR, applying for 
maintainership, reviewing, etc).  Anyone wants to collaborate on that?
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