[Python-Dev] Contributing to Python (original) (raw)

Brett Cannon brett at python.org
Fri Jan 4 09:27:11 CET 2008

On Jan 3, 2008 5:24 PM, Titus Brown <titus at caltech.edu> wrote:

On Thu, Jan 03, 2008 at 03:24:16PM -0500, Joseph Armbruster wrote: -> Having a "core mentor" would be great but do they really have time for -> that? I've been lucky at finding people in #python / #python-dev) that can -> answer development inquiries (or at least verify something is or is not a -> bug).

Again, IMO as someone on the lunatic fringe of core development (i.e. I'm a happy spectator, but I'm too busy to actually get much done): Mentoring coders may not be a traditional route for hard-core OSS developers, but it sure can be effective, as I've found with GHOP. For example, many core Python developers can save an outsider hours of effort by simply and quickly outlining the issues involved in a particular patch or coding effort. Having actual committers involved is especially good, because they can evaluate whether or not a patch is likely to be accepted, potentially cutting out more hours of effort; and they can directly commit patches, leading to the very important gratification of an actual commit.

I know I am happy to do stuff that way when I have time. I know I am just currently drowning under work for the first half of 2008 (PyCon, my own Py3K stuff, and thesis).

>From another angle, there are a lot of "easy" fixes/patches/updates to be done to Python, but I'll be damned if I can figure out which ones are easy meat, or complex, or likely to touch a nerve. Having someone experienced to quickly give an opinion is invaluable. (I'm an overconfident loudmouth, so I don't mind posting to this list, but I think python-dev is pretty intimidating for people new to the hurly burly of OSS development.)

I hope that when it comes time to change the issue tracker schema we can have a reasonable difficulty rating. That should also help for Python bug days since we can say "look at easy bugs if you don't really know C stuff, look at medium if you know C, and tackle hard if you want to dive into the nitty-gritty".

As I've said in other responses in this thread, I'm not sure how to make it happen, but I'm leaning towards asking the active GHOP mentors to try to extend the GHOP mentoring effort into a general python-love effort. We've got a good group of experienced people, and it's been a pretty friendly list IMO.

Could work. Don't know if another list is really needed; couldn't python-dev handle general questions? But then again, that is what the tracker is for.

-Brett

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