Re: How to get involved in the development of postgreSQL

On Sun, Jun 22, 2014 at 9:49 AM, Vito <testforvln(at)163(dot)com> wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> I'm interested in the development of postgreSQL. But I think reading the
> whole document will take a long time.

Are you referring to the user documentation, or the developer documentation?

The user documentation is pretty good, and you should probably read at
least a big chunk of it. By that I don't mean a big chunk of the
pages, but rather a big chunk of the sections. Most of the pages are
concentrated in a few sections like appendices and references and old
release notes which I wouldn't just sit down in read straight through,
but only refer to them as needed.

The developer documentation (README files scattered throughout the
source code, etc.) is spottier, and probably doesn't make much sense
to read in total. Once you have an area you want to work on, you
should certainly read the files for that topic, though. (And one way
to contribute would be to write missing ones or improve existing ones)

> Do I have other means to learn about it faster and quickly begin to get
> involved in the development?

If you don't know what the database does, or how to administer the
database, then you will have a hard time knowing what to develop, or
adequately testing those developments.

If you are not already an experienced DBA, perhaps the best way to
start contributing would be to set up a few database servers based
what you read in the user documentation, including some advanced
features like hot standby, and put it through the paces. Practice
backing up, and recovering. Then based on what you got correct the
first time and what you didn't, see if you can suggest improvements to
the user documentation to make it easier for other new people in the
future. This is a contribution in itself, and will provide you with a
good knowledge background to build on with more code-orientation
contributions.

Cheers,

Jeff