Re: Joining the team

On Friday 22 June 2001 11:55, P. Dwayne Miller wrote:
> If someone was interested in joining the development team, where would
> they...
> - Find a description of the open source development process used by the
> PostgreSQL team.

Read HACKERS for six months (or a full release cycle, whichever is longer).
Really. HACKERS _is_the process. The process is not well documented (AFAIK
-- it may be somewhere that I am not aware of) -- and it changes continually.

> - Find the development environment (OS, system, compilers, etc)
> required to develop code.

Developers Corner on the website has links to this information. The
distribution tarball itself includes all the extra tools and documents that
go beyond a good Unix-like development environment. In general, a modern
unix with a modern gcc, GNU make or equivalent, autoconf (of a particular
version), and good working knowledge of those tools are required.

> - Find an area or two that needs some support.

The TODO list.

You've made the first step, by finding and subscribing to HACKERS. Once you
find an area to look at in the TODO, and have read the documentation on the
internals, etc, then you check out a current CVS,write what you are going to
write (keeping your CVS checkout up to date in the process), and make up a
patch (as a context diff only) and send to the PATCHES list, prefereably.

Discussion on the patch typically happens here. If the patch adds a major
feature, it would be a good idea to talk about it first on the HACKERS list,
in order to increase the chances of it being accepted, as well as toavoid
duplication of effort. Note that experienced developers with a proven track
record usually get the big jobs -- for more than one reason. Also note that
PostgreSQL is highly portable -- nonportable code will likely be dismissed
out of hand.

Once your contributions get accepted, things move from there. Typically, you
would be added as a developer on the list on the website when one of the
other developers recommends it. Membership on the steering committee is by
invitation only, by the other steering committee members, from what I have
gathered watching froma distance.

I make these statements from having watched the process for over two years.

To see a good example of how one goes about this, search the archives for the
name 'Tom Lane' and see what his first post consisted of, and where he took
things. In particular, note that this hasn't been _that_ long ago -- and his
bugfixing and general deep knowledge with this codebase is legendary. Take a
few days to read after him. And pay special attention to both the sheer
quantity as well as the painstaking quality of his work. Both are in high
demand.

Hope that helps!
--
Lamar Owen
WGCR Internet Radio
1 Peter 4:11