Re: Team Collaboration Considerations

[Toon Moene <toon@moene.org>]

On 12/8/22 20:14, Holcomb, Katherine A (kah3f) via Fortran wrote:

> I was thinking I might try to contribute when I retire, though that may be in a year or two.  But it's been a very long time since I dove into a large software project and it's intimidating.  I do know C (really C++, I haven't used plain C for a long time).   I am one of those "aging" types but I am familiar at least superficially with newer tools because I must use them for work, specifically git and Slack (Mattermost seems to be an open-source Slack alternative) -- we make heavy use of Slack in particular.
> 
> Is there some kind of "getting started" guide?

Thanks, Katherine, for your thoughts on this side of support (i.e., 
fixing compiler bugs, and how to get people interested in contributing).

Based on that, I thought of another approach, namely: interesting 
*users* of gfortran to provide us with useful information on their 
experiences with it (lest we only look at the depressing list of PRs).

Would it help if we created a fortran-help@gcc.gnu.org list (a loose 
parallel of gcc-help@gcc.gnu.org) for *questions* from our user base ?

I just have to look at the questions I get at work from my colleagues:

1. I get this message while compiling XYZ weather forecasting model
    (HELP, what does it mean ?). How do I solve it ? Do I need ABC
    (mega-corporation chip manufacturing's) fortran compiler ?

2. gfortran gives me a "internal compiler error", but this code
    compiled perfectly just a year ago (an ICE is never a user's
    problem). How can I work around it ?

3. Is this (source code provided) code conformant ? gfortran
    complains about it, but XYZ compiler just compiles it fine.

etc.

This might not result in many new contributors, but it shows to the 
broader GCC development community what gfortran is used for, and how 
*we* deal with their questions and problems (and, thus, how important 
this part of the GNU Compiler *Collection* is).

Oh, BTW, I retire in nine months, which would give me loads of time to 
deal with such a mailing list.

Kind regards,

-- 
Toon Moene - e-mail: toon@moene.org - phone: +31 346 214290
Saturnushof 14, 3738 XG  Maartensdijk, The Netherlands