

Lower the Barrier for Scratching Open Source Itches - orblivion
http://ill-logic-tech.blogspot.com/2011/04/lower-barrier-for-scratching-open.html

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colanderman
I believe the toolchain he's looking for is:

apt-get source _packagex_

apt-get build-dep _packagex_

tar xzf …

 _code code code_

dpkg-buildpackage

diff -u … > patch.diff

bugreport -A patch.diff _packagex_

The functionality's all there; all that's really needed is a FAQ pointing it
out.

~~~
orblivion
Wait, where does the "bugreport" command come from? I'm running Lucid and it
doesn't work. Searching for it on <http://packages.ubuntu.com/> doesn't seem
to render anything. Do you mean apport?

~~~
colanderman
My bad, the command is "reportbug" in the package of the same name.

------
albertzeyer
I have a script somewhere laying around which does something similar for
Gentoo: You give it a package and it will download and prepare it to some
directory, then let you edit it, then compile it (via the Gentoo ebuild) and
test it and you can repeat those last steps until you have fixed/changed what
you wanted to do. And then it will return a final patch in the end.

I thought this was quite useful. I made quite a few patches this way and was
very productive using this script (in some cases, it took me only about 2-5
minutes to prepare a patch if the fix was easy).

Though, the script was very hacky and it still often needed some hand-work to
be made. I asked some Gentoo developers if there might want to make a full
project out of this (because I thought that this might be a useful and
important thing) but nobody really was interested.

------
bugsy
I have found it is extremely problematic to contribute to open source. The
reasons are good ones though and the problem not solvable.

A typical open source experience for me (some 90% of cases) is I download a
package, compile it, and it doesn't compile. Something is missing or it can't
handle the latest version of the OS, or there is some library with the wrong
version.

Now fixing it can take 1 hr to 6 months of work and you don't have any idea
before you start.

The answer for me now is "why bother" and I stop there. In general it saves
money to buy commercial software that does the exact same thing rather than
figure this stuff out for 9 out of 10 open source downloads.

In the past I would fix the problem and try to submit a fix. Wrong answer! You
can't submit a fix. Most projects won't accept it unless you join their cult,
endure hazing, chat about politics and accept their belief system, and adulate
their leaders and trolls.

Not worth it at all.

edit: Thanks for the downvotes. Do you really feel the above contributes
nothing, or do you just not tolerate those who point out there are serious
problems with the ability of non-project members to make open source
contributions? I assure you these are real problems. I also am not surprised
that anything other than adulation of Stallman's testicles is furiously
downvoted by basement denziens.

~~~
jamesbritt
_I also am not surprised that anything other than adulation of Stallman's
testicles is furiously downvoted by basement denziens._

Truth is you'll get a better reception without pointless angry tripe.

I've no way of knowing what your OSS experiences have been, so I'll take you
at your word. However, a broad statement such as this:

"Most projects won't accept it unless you join their cult, endure hazing, chat
about politics and accept their belief system, and adulate their leaders and
trolls."

... strikes me as patent bullshit. Maybe most projects _you've_ tried to
contribute to have turned out this way, but then I have to wonder if the
problem is with the project owners or if maybe you approach things with an
incredibly dismal attitude.

Some project owners and communities may suck, but _most_? You'll have to
provide something more than bitter anecdote.

The biggest problems I've had with OSS projects is not getting an answer to
questions. There are a good number of "works for me" code repos that simply
refuse to build on my system no matter what dependency dance I do. If that's
the case I go look for an alternative (though on Linux it's typically not
something I can purchase).

Mostly I get things to _almost_ work and get stuck, and then join a forum or
mailing list or something to get some help.

Help tends to be of two forms: None at all, or friendly and pragmatic.

I've offered patches to a few projects, and everyone has been very nice about
it, even when I forget to include unit tests or fucked up their coding
convention. Maybe I've just been lucky.

As the maintainer of several OSS projects I empathize with those I contact for
help ro offer patches. Time is often short, and most people aren't getting
paid to support their OSS projects.

Most of this is all a gift, and when a gift turns out to be not quite what you
hoped for better to just move on and be grateful for you have, not bitter
about what you didn't get.

------
chris_j
The problem that the author describes is certainly a real one. If you want to
hack on an open source project, it is sometimes tricky to figure out how to
get the source and dependencies and then build the thing. Still, surely the
actual process of learning the codebase and making changes to the code involve
far far more effort for any non-trivial open source project. So you can make
it easy to get started hacking the code but that's only a small part of the
overall process.

~~~
orblivion
True, but I guess I was thinking about basic things like crashes. Crashes tend
to be among the easiest bugs to fix (you don't need to know that much about
the codebase, you just need to know why there was a null pointer when it
wasn't expecting one, for instance), and they're among the most annoying. This
may not be the best setup for adding features. Anything in between, that's an
interesting question I guess.

------
Jun8
The OP is much more detailed but reminded me of a project I thought about some
time ago: A site to match people with skills willing to put time in open
source projects and the projects that need them, like how a dating site works,
or Google Summer of Code.

Is there such a thing, is this a good idea?

~~~
geekam
Isn't this what <http://openhatch.org/> does?

~~~
Jun8
Indeed! I didn't know about this site, thanks.

~~~
geekam
Apart from just matching devs with opesource projects, they should also build
a system to help out newbies.

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darkxanthos
We're hoping to help this a bit at Alt.Net 2011. I'm co-organizer and we've
been pushing hard to get several quality OSS project leaders to come and use
our conference as a platform to gain collaboration. We've got one last one to
add from Cheezburger Network but see the list here:
<http://altnet2011.heroku.com/oss>

------
rflrob
> This is a regular user with some coding skills

I love that there are communities where "regular user" and "coding skills"
overlap.

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wtracy
The Gentoo community might be interested in this.

