Years back I took over the ownership of the third-party Arch Linux package for ruby-build because the maintainer at the time wasn't using it anymore and was looking to pass it off. At the time, I had no idea that Ruby did released every Christmas, but I found out a few months later when I got an email mentioning the package was out of date that day. Even though I haven't done much Ruby dev for years now, it's been a small little tradition of mine since then to update the package first thing every Christmas morning and push out the update (basically, just updating the version number in a file in a git repo and then running a couple commands to update the checksums and push the changes; nothing anywhere close to the amount of work that people who actually develop that tool do, let alone the people who work on the language!). I can't help but feel like that farmer from the meme saying "it ain't much, but it's honest work"; I enjoyed the little tradition I've built up and like thinking that maybe every now and then someone might have noticed and been pleased to get the updates without having to file a notice to remind me to update things (although it's happened a few times since that time years ago, I hope it hasn't been that often!).
Just now, I was surprised to see that the package seems to be getting put into the official Arch repos, so my eight years of very minimal volunteer service seem to be at an end. I still think I'm going to remember doing this and smile a little every Christmas morning for years to come!
Just now, I was surprised to see that the package seems to be getting put into the official Arch repos, so my eight years of very minimal volunteer service seem to be at an end. I still think I'm going to remember doing this and smile a little every Christmas morning for years to come!