Apprentices? (was =patch - Report the schema...)

On Nov 15, 2009, at 5:14 PM, Andrew Dunstan wrote:
> Then I think we need to start being more creative about ways to ease
> the path for people who want to get people involved.

With that as an inspiration, I'd like to offer a modest proposal:
Apprentices.

In my case, I would be very exciting about participating more in PG
development. I have a reasonable amount of C/C++ experience (20-ish
years), and have been a PG admin/client developer since 1998, but I
lack enough familiarity with the codebase to do patch review on non-
trivial patches, or to launch in and do development on a non-trivial
feature. (And, as has been noted, there are essential no non-trivial
features needing work.)

On the other hand, I'm sure there are those such as myself who are
perfectly capable in *assisting* in some way: Reviewing a patch for
specific things, writing test cases, working on a subsection of a
larger patch. This also is a solution for the intimidating prospect
of working on a large patch and being sold, "Um, that's really
completely the wrong thing. Sorry."

Not every primary contribution or patch reviewer is going to be
comfortable working with other people, because of temperament or work
style, but I'm sure some are. Might this help?
--
-- Christophe Pettus
xof(at)thebuild(dot)com