[Fedora-join] Fedora-join question

[Ankur Sinha]

Hi Francis!

On Mon, 2013-02-18 at 15:46 -0400, Francis Martin wrote:
> Hello, I posted a question on the freenode IRC and didnt recieve an
> answer because there wasn't a lot of poeple around at the time so I
> figured I'd send it here. I'm not really experienced with mailing
> lists but if you think my question is pertinent for a next mailing
> feel free to include it in there.

Yeah. I haven't been able to hang around on the IRC either. I'm glad you
decided to mail the list instead :)

> The question goes as followed and thanks for any answers :-)
> 
> <Justiceh> hello all

Hello ;)

> <Justiceh> I have a question for anybody that can answer me. I am a
> Linux user for about 3 years now. I know my way around repos and
> pretty much everything an everyday user faces in terms of
> troubles/troubleshooting to commands and packages. Although I stepped
> on Fedora for the reason that I see great potential to help here as
> the project is very open and community oriented. I've been looking for
> informations everywhere on what I'd like to do
> <Justiceh> and I found that I'd very much like to improve Fedora with
> their coding. Although I'm french and master my language pretty well,
> I'd like to contribute to code. Fedora (from what I saw) does not
> really work on their own Kernel developpement but seem to be
> centralised on what goes on top of it
>  <Justiceh> now I'm wondering where I should start in the different
> coding aspects of Fedora to build experience and confidence to tackle
> bigger matters.
> <Justiceh> I have to tell.. I have no experience (if basic) in any
> languages as for writing code but I fiddled a bit with HTML back on
> enigmagroup.org's website where I found that reading and working with
> code was very very satisfying for me (all the challenges and stuff
> like that) I was learning a lot
> <Justiceh> So ULTIMATLY haha... my question is : where should I start
> in terms of : languages, projects, mentorship to get to my rank of
> Jedi master after a couple years.
> <Justiceh> my intestests are : Engeneering, Infrastructure, bug
> fixing/bug tracking, Package management and testing
> <Justiceh> I will wait for any answers :-) and thanks for reading my
> post 

You've gotten it right. Fedora doesn't really develop software itself,
unless it's for the community, like AutoQA or infrastructure. What we do
is take FOSS software from developers and package it all up so that it's
easy for users to use (like any other Linux distribution). Coding wise,
we generally limit ourselves to patches for bugs that our users might
experience. We send these patches upstream to the developers so that
they may include it and make it available to the entire Linux universe
(more on this here[1]). Another important aspect of the community, other
than bugfixing, that requires programming knowledge, is package
maintenance. It's because you need to know the various build systems
that are around to be able to create an rpm package. 

You can start with QA[2], package maintaining[3] if you'd like to
utilize your knowledge of compiling stuff from source. Infrastructure[4]
is more for people with system administration experience.

Since you know French, you can also help with the i10n
(internationalis/zation) project, at docs[5], or websites[6], or
marketing[7], or upstream.

There is no "place to start" really. Just pick up anything that
interests you and get started! As you work, you'll meet people, you'll
interact with other teams and all of a sudden, you'll have a pile of
work from different areas in the community to bury you ;)

Oh! Keep an eye on the "easyfix" list here[8]. It's often the best place
to start. The issues are generally easy and they give you a chance to
interact with someone in the community who you learn lots from!

The answer is quite general, and I'm sorry for it. The best we can do
when asked "where do I start?" is lay it out and let you choose. We
really cannot tell you an exact starting point. You choose the path, you
walk it. We're merely sign boards ;)

[1] https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Staying_close_to_upstream_projects
[2] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/QA/Join
[3]
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Join_the_package_collection_maintainers
[4] https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Infrastructure/GettingStarted
[5] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Join_the_Docs_Project
[6] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Websites/Join
[7] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Joining_the_Fedora_marketing_project
[8] http://fedoraproject.org/easyfix/
-- 
Thanks, 
Warm regards,
Ankur: "FranciscoD"

Please only print if necessary. 

Looking to contribute to Fedora? Look here: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Fedora_Join_SIG

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/User:Ankursinha
http://dodoincfedora.wordpress.com/
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