interested in working on freeBSD

[Alexander Leidinger]

Quoting Julian Elischer <julian at elischer.org> (from Mon, 24 Sep 2007  
10:10:29 -0700):

> Julian Elischer wrote:
>> Sanket Somnath Hase wrote:
>>> Hi Matt ,
>>> We are graduate students at Carnegie Mellon University. We are enrolled in
>>> a course (Operating systems practicum http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~412/ ) which
>>> involves hands-on experience with operating-system code as it is developed
>>> and deployed in the real world. Murray Stokley referred us to you.
>>>
>>> We were thinking of contibuting to FreeBSD.We read through the   
>>> description of your project "Rewrite the in-kernel file system   
>>> syncer" and found it interesting.Could you let us know the status   
>>> of this project? It will be great if you could mention some   
>>> related readings.
>>>   We have already taken an operating system design and implementation class
>>> (http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~410/ ) before where we developed a UNIX like
>>> kernel from scratch. We have fair experience in reading-coding-debugging
>>> kernel code. All three of us interned at core systems group at companies
>>> like Google and Oracle in the past summer.
>>>   Our team can invest 30 hours per week, for a period of 12 weeks of this
>>> Fall semester. We are wondering if we can contribute to FreeBSD.
>>> It will be great if you could give us some pointers towards such work.
>>>   Looking forward to hear from you,
>>
>> Now that you have introduced yourself (step 1) that leaves only
>> the following steps.
>>
>> 2/ look at the source to decide what is currently done.
>>
>> 3/ find who works in that area (use the CVS logs from the CVS web   
>> interface) to
>> see who's been active in that area and try contact them to   
>> co-ordinate. (if no one answers that means you can proceed).
>
> step 4 became part of 3.. I forgot to renumber the later steps :-)

AFAIK nobody works on the syncer. And nobody contacted me so far to  
ask about this entry on the ideas list. As I get several requests for  
other entries from time to time (without that someone produces  
something) I conclude (based upon my experience with the ideas list):
  - most people think this entry is too advanced for them
  - nobody is looking into it

>> 5/ discuss your changes and keep us up to date in arch at freebsd.org   
>> for initial discussions on ideas and current at freebsd.org when you   
>> are implementing and need
>> to discuss things with people.

I would add: if there are parts which are too advanced for you, just  
ask on the lists. There are people out there which may be able to  
help. Don't be afraid if something looks too big. If you go closer  
there are always things you can do yourself, and if not... just ask on  
the lists (arch@/current@).

>> 6/ announce calls for testers and code drops when you are near completion.
>>
>> 7/ take a vacation.
>>
>> Except for politeness (not stepping on other people's work) you don't need
>> to ask permission to do any work on this or any FreeBSD component.
>>
>> If the work is good and well documented, and passes a good review, it will
>> be accepted back.

And to make it good and accepted, a good thing to do is to keep the  
people up to date. Provide access to your work (e.g. posting links to  
patches) and discuss various things on the lists. There are also  
people which are willing to test changes (warn them if the changes are  
in areas where a bug may result in data-loss), and there are always  
edge-cases which you don't find yourself but broad testing will  
reveal. Use the possibilities the lists provide (testers, reviews,  
opinions) and you are on a good way to get an useful end-result.

Bye,
Alexander.

-- 
I can't decide which WRONG TURN to make first!!  I wonder if BOB
GUCCIONE has these problems!

http://www.Leidinger.net    Alexander @ Leidinger.net: PGP ID = B0063FE7
http://www.FreeBSD.org       netchild @ FreeBSD.org  : PGP ID = 72077137