Re: Fast releases demand binary updates.. (Was: Release schedule for 2006 )

Gleb Smirnoff wrote:

>  Eric,
>
>On Thu, Jan 12, 2006 at 07:13:46AM -0600, Eric Anderson wrote:
>E> That's true, if you can find a committer willing to help - and I think 
>E> that's the issue.  I've tried numerous times to contact committers of 
>E> certain areas, asking quick questions, or things like 'if I build this, 
>E> would it be comittable?' - with about 80% of the time receiving no 
>E> response.  Now, I'm not complaining, or claiming they should reply - 
>E> they are volunteers and already busy doing their regular life stuff in 
>E> addition to the FreeBSD code they contribute.  I'm just mentioning it as 
>E> a data point, that it is pretty hard to find a committer willing to 
>E> mentor someone, or at a minimum, give them pointers.  The -hackers list 
>E> is excellent as far as answering most technical questions (rapidly!), 
>E> but in the end, it is pretty difficult to find a committer to listen to 
>E> you, unless you already have patches ready to roll, since that takes 
>E> less time of course.
>
>First you should to check whether given person is active now in CVS and/or
>mailing lists. If he is not, then you have a lesser chance to get answer.
>  
>
Yep, all the people I email are active on the lists, for sure, and 
almost always active (or extremely active) committers.


>If he is active, then don't hesitate to ask for help. And don't be afraid
>to send a reminded, if discussion freezes.
>
>And don't forget that email goblins can eat your email. This is quite often
>a reason for "ignoring", at least for myself.
>  
>
Yea, I forget about that, thanks for pointing it out..


>E> Maybe, on the FreeBSD developers page, we could have a list of 
>E> categories and mentors for those categories for those willing to work on 
>E> code to contact with questions, etc.  Then committers could volunteer as 
>E> a mentor for a category they enjoy..  Or is it enough to just post to 
>E> -hackers asking 'anyone want to mentor me?' ?
>
>  
>


-- 
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Eric Anderson        Sr. Systems Administrator        Centaur Technology
Anything that works is better than anything that doesn't.
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