gEDA-dev: I'd like to become a developer

[Stuart Brorson]

Ryan,

Thanks for your ideas and your interest!   We're very happy to hear
that somebody from WPI is interested in our work!  Personally, I've
worked (in my real life) with several great engineers from WPI.
You're following in big footsteps!

The way we usually work with new developers is this:  First please
submit your changes/fixes as patches.  This involves using the "diff"
unix command to create a .diff file which one of the developers with
CVS access can then apply to the code.  You can read more about this
by doing "man diff", "man patch", and doing some Googling.  Then, you
can submit your .diff files either at the SourceForge page, or just
post them to the geda-dev e-mail list.  One of the gEDA developers
will then apply your patch to the relevant program, and check the new
version into CVS.  Please be sure to also supply an entry for the
ChangeLog file.

After you've been around for a while (a few months) and the quality of
your patches meets our levels of quality (whatever they are), then you
will be given CVS access.  Until then, please be patient with us,
since we want to get to know you.  Also, if we aren't paying 
sufficient attention to your patches, please don't hesitate to bug us
a little bit -- if we don't respond immediately, we will eventually
get to you.  But do please be patient since most of the developers are
full-time working engineers who have busy professional lives.

Maybe if you first submit a patch for the refdes_renum issue you
found, we can apply that patch quickly and we can thereby get to know
each other.  As for your other refdes_renum ideas, go ahead and submit
patches and we can also apply them.  As for the symbol libs, if you
want to do some cleaning up (since they are a real mess), please go
ahead!

Finally, since you're in Worcester, you may know that some of us are
involved in an orgainzation called "Free Dog" -- the Free EDA Users
Group (Free EDA UG -- try pronouncing it).  In general, we meet in the
evening at the beginning each month  at a Starbucks in Cambridge near
MIT.  Perhaps you would like to come and meet us some evening?  We
generall just hang out, show off our latest gEDA projects, hack a
little code, and talk about what's going on in the gEDA world.  Keep
an eye on the geda-user list and you'll see the Free Dog meeting
announcements.

Cheers,

Stuart


On Sat, 28 Oct 2006, Meador, Ryan D wrote:

> Hi,
> I'm an Electrical and Computer Engineering major at the Worcester Polytechnic
> Institute (Worcester, MA, USA) and new user of the gEDA tool suite.  In the
> past few weeks of designing circuits with gschem, I've noticed some things
> about the program that I think could be improved.  I'd like to join the
> development team so I can help make these changes happen.  I'm very familiar
> with C and C++, but I am relatively new to using it on linux.  I also am just
> learning LISP, so I don't know how useful I'll be for the main programs, but
> I've already found and fixed a bug in one of the utilities.  I'm obviously
> new to the dev mailing list and as such out of the loop in your development
> process, but below I've outlined some of my thoughts and what I would like to
> do for your project if you'd like to take me on as a developer.
>
> The bug is in refdes_renum.  It doesn't properly handle schematic files with
> spaces in their name.  The fix is extremely simple: on the line where it
> executes the system() call to mv the resultant file back to the original,
> some quotation marks (escaped, of course) need to be inserted around both
> arguments to mv.  I've checked your CVS and found that this bug is still
> present in the most recent version in the repo.  I'd be happy to commit my
> fix if someone wishes to create a CVS account for me (though it's quite
> simple enough for someone else to do in about 2 secs).  During the diagnosis
> and fix of this bug, I spent some time reading the associated code and wiki
> pages.  It seems there are a few other bugs and feature requests that I could
> do in a very short amount of time as my first contribution to the gEDA
> project.  First off, that script should start numbering components at 1 when
> only one .sch file is specified (it seems to start at 101 always).  Someone
> wanted an option to not renumber already-numbered components.  It may also be
> nice to have a -a option to the script to cause it to operate on all .sch
> files in the current directory (though I suppose it's easy enough to specify
> *.sch).  I could also write some documentation on the script for your wiki.
> I was thinking perhaps this script should replace grenum, which doesn't
> renumber already-numbered components (always-renumber and number-unnumbered
> are both desirable behaviors and should have a switch).
>
> As far as gschem itself, my first request (or task) would be to alphabetize
> the component lists in the Add Component dialog.  I'd also like to take a
> stab at some auto-routing of nets around other components.
>
> Thanks for your time and I look forward to hearing your opinions of my
> suggestions,
> Ryan
>
>
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