+1 to code sprints (aka. hackathons) and what Andrew is saying here.
Face to face events, and especially code sprints are a great way to make
human connections and build trust in the community. It is so easy to
overlook how crucial this is for newcomers. Bringing them into the
community is battling against a very easy choice to simply walk away.
Tools and process have to be "just right" to balance properly. But you
can have amazing tools and if people just aren't inspired, or if people
inadvertently get turned off by lack of engagement even awesome tools
won't fix that. A buffer of trust built by face to face contact can help
a lot to forgive inevitable misunderstandings, delays, PITA's, and other
issues that crop up.
On 13/07/13 18:06, Andrew Eisenberg wrote:
I'm not saying this is THE answer or anything, but it may be a small
step towards getting more contributors and outside participation.
We've been holding hackathons instead of demo camps for the past
couple of years and they've been well attended (20-30 people) and at
the end of the evening we have had 4-5 patches that are good enough
that with a little polish can be contributed to the code base.
Granted, we haven't had any long term contributors or committers come
out of this, but at least it is introducing newcomers to open source
and the Eclipse community. I've generally found the experience more
rewarding that the demo camps.
It's still a bunch of work for the project leads: making sure the
getting started docs are up to date, and finding/creating a bunch of
bugs suitable for newcomers, etc. But this is something that is a lot
of work up front and then it pays off over the long run.
This is not a way to get people to fix the hard bugs, and it's not
really a way to save work for project members (since any bug that a
newcomer can fix in an evening is something that a project member can
fix in a couple of hours). What this really does is bring life into
the community and make it seem like Eclipse is not "dead". And maybe
over time, if enough hackathons are held, this is a way to slowly turn
people into committers.
regards,
Andrew
On Sat, Jul 13, 2013 at 1:15 PM, Doug Schaefer <dschae...@qnx.com
<mailto:dschae...@qnx.com>> wrote:
I think we can do that. Let's take that conversation to the
cdt-dev list.
*From: *Aleksandar Kurtakov
*Sent: *Saturday, July 13, 2013 2:35 AM
*To: *Cross project issues
*Reply To: *Cross project issues
*Subject: *Re: [cross-project-issues-dev] FW: [Doug on the Eclipse
CDT] New comment on "Eclipse smells kind of dead"???.
----- Original Message -----
> From: "Doug Schaefer" <dschae...@qnx.com <mailto:dschae...@qnx.com>>
> To: "Cross project issues" <cross-project-issues-dev@eclipse.org
<mailto:cross-project-issues-dev@eclipse.org>>
> Sent: Friday, July 12, 2013 10:19:55 PM
> Subject: Re: [cross-project-issues-dev] FW: [Doug on the Eclipse
CDT] New comment on "Eclipse smells kind of
> dead"???.
>
> Thanks Aleks, that's the kind of thing I'm looking for. It's
these little
> ideas that could help get new people involved in Eclipse. We can
probably
> think of a lot of little projects for people to work on.
>
> Mind you, it needs someone or a small group to nurture.
Hi Doug,
My team would be more than happy to join and help such initiative
- via reviews, help newcomers, advertise it, with one existing CDT
committer even push. This would be a radical change in my eyes
for how Eclipse projects work - there will be changes for the sake
of the change itself and getting someone involved even if not
immediately benefitting. As I don't think Platform would jump on
such approach (at least not now) and for such an experiment to be
viable a high profile project is needed. CDT is perfect for this
in my eyes. What do you think? Will CDT devs welcome such a try?
Can someone from CDT mark "easy hack" bugs somehow (keyword?) or
open such bugs so there is smth to start with?
I know it may sound like pushing but this issue comes and goes
periodically and it dies in discussing so a try-and-error approach
is probably better. Even if nothing is gained all that can be lost
is some amount of our precious time which is better use of it than
just discussing.
Alexander Kurtakov
Red Hat Eclipse team
>
> As for the current discussion on what WONTFIX means. That
doesn't really
> matter much. The issue is that problems that many users seem to
really
> care about, enough to post on some hate forum (or communicate to me
> directly if you need proof they are real), aren't getting fixed.
>
> Doug.
>
> On 13-07-12 1:55 PM, "Aleksandar Kurtakov" <akurt...@redhat.com
<mailto:akurt...@redhat.com>> wrote:
>
> >----- Original Message -----
> >> From: "Doug Schaefer" <dschae...@qnx.com
<mailto:dschae...@qnx.com>>
> >> To: "Cross project issues"
<cross-project-issues-dev@eclipse.org
<mailto:cross-project-issues-dev@eclipse.org>>
> >> Sent: Friday, July 12, 2013 7:57:28 PM
> >> Subject: Re: [cross-project-issues-dev] FW: [Doug on the
Eclipse CDT]
> >>New comment on "Eclipse smells kind of
> >> dead"???.
> >>
> >> I'm sure your powers that be will tell you we've all been
trying that
> >>for
> >> years. Eclipse doesn't suck enough for that to work, which is
a good
> >>thing
> >> in a way. That's why I hope we can aim at the grassroots people,
> >>individual
> >> users, who have the skills to help.
> >
> >Exactly. But this people are attracted by being able to use the
thing
> >they have seen being advertized, being teached in university,
read about
> >in latest news site, etc.
> >Eclipse projects usually don't satisfy any of these. Look at
LibreOffice
> >there is a lot to be learned from that community. Especially their
> >EasyHack initiative. They let people work on modernizing the
codebase for
> >the sake of more people getting familiar with the codebase. It
might not
> >buy the project anything immediately but once jumped in there
is some
> >percentage of people that stay for a bit bigger tasks and a
number of
> >them become important contributors.
> >If e.g. you make it public that for CDT things like the
following are
> >acceptable:
> >* use try_with_resources
> >* use the java 7 exception ease of use
> >* string in switch
> >* foreach, etc.
> >
> >And these patches get accepted easily. Some of them might be
willing to
> >even try harder tasks like "port CDT to use
org.eclipse.ui.console".
> >This is a guess of course but it seems to have worked well for
> >LibreOffice.
> >
> >Alexander Kurtakov
> >
> >>
> >> Doug.
> >>
> >> From: Denis Roy < denis....@eclipse.org
<mailto:denis....@eclipse.org> >
> >> Reply-To: Cross project issues <
cross-project-issues-dev@eclipse.org
<mailto:cross-project-issues-dev@eclipse.org> >
> >> Date: Friday, 12 July, 2013 6:50 PM
> >> To: " cross-project-issues-dev@eclipse.org
<mailto:cross-project-issues-dev@eclipse.org> " <
> >> cross-project-issues-dev@eclipse.org
<mailto:cross-project-issues-dev@eclipse.org> >
> >> Subject: Re: [cross-project-issues-dev] FW: [Doug on the
Eclipse CDT]
> >>New
> >> comment on "Eclipse smells kind of dead"???.
> >>
> >> On 07/12/2013 12:25 PM, Doug Schaefer wrote:
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> It is. And I'm sure there are hate sites for every tool
people use.
> >>Eclipse
> >> isn't unique that way.
> >>
> >> My point is that user experience is so important to our
success, we
> >>need to
> >> be sensitive to the issues our users are facing. There are a
lot of such
> >> issues marked WONTFIX, and CDT is as guilty of that as
anyone. I'm just
> >> wondering how we fix it.
> >>
> >> As a committer, I'd be selling the community needs to BigCorp
> >>management. If
> >> BigCorp's products are built on Eclipse, and Eclipse comes to
have the
> >> reputation of "suck", then BigCorp's products will inherit
that. Since
> >>the
> >> users of today are the managers of tomorrow, these managers won't
> >>purchase
> >> products that are based on "suck".
> >>
> >> I'll do my part here: I think the eclipse.org
<http://eclipse.org> website (including the
> >>Bugzilla
> >> UI) is starting to suck, and I've already begun selling the
idea to the
> >> powers that be. Not that they need much convincing :)
> >>
> >> D.
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> Doug.
> >>
> >> From: Denis Roy < denis....@eclipse.org
<mailto:denis....@eclipse.org> >
> >> Reply-To: Cross project issues <
cross-project-issues-dev@eclipse.org
<mailto:cross-project-issues-dev@eclipse.org> >
> >> Date: Friday, 12 July, 2013 5:54 PM
> >> To: " cross-project-issues-dev@eclipse.org
<mailto:cross-project-issues-dev@eclipse.org> " <
> >> cross-project-issues-dev@eclipse.org
<mailto:cross-project-issues-dev@eclipse.org> >
> >> Subject: Re: [cross-project-issues-dev] FW: [Doug on the
Eclipse CDT]
> >>New
> >> comment on "Eclipse smells kind of dead"???.
> >>
> >> Actually, I think it is awesome feedback, since there are only a
> >>handful of
> >> issues that seem to raise the anger levels.
> >>
> >> I was able to trace a few of the top items to some old bugs:
> >>
> >> File out of sync:
> >> https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=228039
> >>
> >> Line numbers on by default:
> >> https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=191154
> >>
> >>
> >> Those bugs are fairly old and both are closed WONTFIX. It
would be
> >> interesting if they could be reopened for discussion.
> >>
> >> Denis
> >>
> >>
> >> On 07/12/2013 11:31 AM, Doug Schaefer wrote:
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> http://www.ihateeclipse.com ???
> >>
> >> Pretty awesome feedback from our passionate user base.
> >>
> >> :D
> >>
> >> From: " cdtd...@gmail.com <mailto:cdtd...@gmail.com> " <
cdtd...@gmail.com <mailto:cdtd...@gmail.com> >
> >> Date: Friday, 12 July, 2013 5:29 PM
> >> To: Doug Schaefer < dschae...@qnx.com
<mailto:dschae...@qnx.com> >
> >> Subject: Fw: [Doug on the Eclipse CDT] New comment on
"Eclipse smells
> >>kind of
> >> dead"???.
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> From: Alex Lagarde
> >> Sent: Friday, July 12, 2013 11:25 AM
> >> To: cdtd...@gmail.com <mailto:cdtd...@gmail.com>
> >> Subject: [Doug on the Eclipse CDT] New comment on "Eclipse
smells kind
> >>of
> >> dead"???.
> >>
> >> Alex Lagarde has left a new comment on your post " "Eclipse
smells kind
> >>of
> >> dead"??? ":
> >>
> >> Interesting post. Maybe even worst than bugzillas that get no
answer are
> >> general complaints about Eclipse/Projects that never were
raised as
> >>issues.
> >> That's why this Website, as painfull as it is, provides very
interesting
> >> feedback http://www.ihateeclipse.com/
> >>
> >> We may have to think about a better way for end-user to raise
such
> >>"feelings"
> >> (maybe an amazon-like rating system which would allow to very
quickly
> >>rate
> >> from 0 to 5 stars a feature or a project).
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> Posted by Alex Lagarde to Doug on the Eclipse CDT at 4:25 PM
GMT+1
> >>
> >>
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