How to contribute (was: (no subject))

[Ryan Schmidt]

On Feb 23, 2007, at 19:14, Mark Dymek wrote:

> Hi i would like to become a Developer/Contributer to macports how  
> do i get started? In other words how do i find out which projects  
> are not being done by someone or should i just look over the  
> current projects and see one i like or should i just submit my own  
> thing to you guys and see if you like it and want to include it? I  
> know you are still transferring over from darwinports but i can't  
> seem to find any documentation on either of the two sites that  
> gives specific instructions to people who want to become part of  
> the team. Any help would be appreciated thanks a lot.

If you would like to write new portfiles or update existing ones, you  
can do so locally, then submit a patch to a new ticket in Trac. Then  
send a message to this list with the ticket URL and a committer will  
evaluate the ticket and hopefully commit the change. Portfiles are  
written in a language called tcl, but it's not hard to learn, and the  
easiest way is probably to just look at some of the existing  
portfiles to see how they do things.

You can also help by looking through the open tickets, seeing which  
don't have patches already, and writing and attaching the patches,  
then informing the list which tickets you've done this for.

Even finding open tickets that already have patches, that just  
haven't been committed yet, and alerting the list about these can be  
helpful. If you can first try the patch out locally and verify that  
it fixes whatever the issue is, that's even better.

You can find ports that are abandoned by looking for the maintainer  
set to nomaintainer at macports.org, like this:

$ port echo maintainer:nomaintainer at macports.org

I currently see over a thousand unmaintained ports. If you see one in  
the list that you would like to maintain, you can alert the list or a  
committer and we can make you the maintainer. Then you can submit  
updates to the port as above, and other users of that port will know  
to contact you when they have questions or requests.

Commit access can be granted to people who have made several positive  
contributions. Generally you should be the maintainer of several  
ports already before you request commit access.

If you would like to develop the core MacPorts code, you can make  
local changes and submit a patch to a new ticket in Trac, just like  
with the ports, and then one of the core MacPorts code developers can  
review your changes. I'm not sure if there's a current roadmap of  
desired future changes at this point. If there is, that would be the  
place to look for ideas for contributions.