From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (qmail 17445 invoked by alias); 23 Apr 2010 20:24:10 -0000 Received: (qmail 17226 invoked by uid 22791); 23 Apr 2010 20:24:08 -0000 X-SWARE-Spam-Status: No, hits=0.4 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_05,DKIM_SIGNED,DKIM_VALID,DKIM_VALID_AU,FREEMAIL_FROM,SARE_MSGID_LONG45,TW_CX X-Spam-Check-By: sourceware.org Received: from mail-ww0-f47.google.com (HELO mail-ww0-f47.google.com) (74.125.82.47) by sourceware.org (qpsmtpd/0.43rc1) with ESMTP; Fri, 23 Apr 2010 20:24:00 +0000 Received: by wwb18 with SMTP id 18so6260499wwb.20 for ; Fri, 23 Apr 2010 13:23:58 -0700 (PDT) Received: by 10.216.93.2 with SMTP id k2mr818724wef.56.1272054238245; Fri, 23 Apr 2010 13:23:58 -0700 (PDT) MIME-Version: 1.0 Received: by 10.216.73.9 with HTTP; Fri, 23 Apr 2010 13:23:38 -0700 (PDT) In-Reply-To: References: From: =?ISO-8859-1?Q?Manuel_L=F3pez=2DIb=E1=F1ez?= Date: Fri, 23 Apr 2010 20:32:00 -0000 Message-ID: Subject: Re: Why not contribute? (to GCC) To: HyperQuantum Cc: gcc Mailing List Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Mailing-List: contact gcc-help@gcc.gnu.org; run by ezmlm Precedence: bulk List-Id: List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: Sender: gcc-owner@gcc.gnu.org X-SW-Source: 2010-04/txt/msg00587.txt.bz2 On 23 April 2010 21:58, HyperQuantum wrote: > On Fri, Apr 23, 2010 at 8:39 PM, Manuel L=F3pez-Ib=E1=F1ez > wrote: >> This seems to be the question running around the blogosphere for >> several projects. And I would like to ask all people that read this >> list but hardly say or do anything. >> >> What reasons keep you from contributing to GCC? > > The lack of time, for the most part. For GCC there are other reasons as w= ell: Not even a sunday afternoon from time to time, instead of watching TV? ;-) > - the paperwork. I cannot just submit a patch if I feel like it. This you have to do once and it is done. > - not easy to find something to contribute. Stuff that is either not > interesting to me, or too difficult for me to easily get into. GCC is > a mature project, so there aren't much 'holes to fill' (at first > sight, for a beginner). There are a lot of mini-projects in the wiki: http://gcc.gnu.org/wiki/SummerOfCode And many stupid bugs in bugzilla. I am sure that if you say what you would be interested to do, people will have a thousand mini-projects for you and some developers will offer to mentor you. > - the programming language. I don't have any experience with C, I only > know some things about it because it's a subset of C++. You said it is a subset! Precisely the controversy about moving to C++ (hey! you can find more mini-projects here: http://gcc.gnu.org/wiki/gcc-in-cxx ) is the other way around: People do not want to learn the new things of C++. If you know C++, you know 99% of C, then it is just getting used to what you cannot do in C. > And I'm also watching other projects. I cannot contribute to all. > Well, actually I don't contribute to any project right now. Since I > started programming for my day job I don't really feel like > programming in the evenings or weekends anymore. Before that I spent > most of my free time working on my own project, my programming > language. But now I don't even have time to work on that anymore. Fair enoug. But still, you are subscribed to this list. That must mean something ;-) Cheers, Manuel.