The PyOhio contribu-palooza starts this Saturday! http://www.pyohio.org/Contribute With two talks and a two-day-four-night sprint, I'm very hopeful that it will recruit and train some new core workers. I'm preparing my portion, the teach-the-newbie (me) -to-fix-a-core-bug session, and I want to make sure that I'm prepared in two ways: 1. Any bulky download/compilation steps are complete I pulled the Py3 trunk with svn co http://svn.python.org/projects/python/branches/py3k python, did the compilation steps, and verified that I can fire up the latest build. I also note that http://www.python.org/dev/ doesn't say anything about hg yet. Is there someplace else I should look for hg-centered docs? Should we just teach it using svn if that's better documented? Then again, if hg is the way of the future... I also built the docs (``cd Doc; make html``) Are there other things that I need to do to configure my machine beforehand? Things that are too long/boring for the audience to sit through while I do it live? 2. Have a good set of questions to ask. Here's what I'm planning so far: - While running ``make test`` on the Python trunk, I got an error on "test_os". Is that a problem with my machine's configuration, or with the build? Do I need to report it? Can I ignore it? Now we'll find a bug. - Do I need an account on bugs.python.org? What do I need to do to get one? - How do I find a bug suitable for me to work on? - entry-level - in Python not C - corresponding to my strong points / interests Now we'll "find" a fake bug that David has planted for us. (David, have you planted it yet?) - Can/should I make my edits directly in the trunk that I just pulled down? - Now we'll make the fix... maybe this should involve using a debugging IDE or pdb? - How do I verify that my fix worked? That it didn't break anything else? That it's written with proper style? That it doesn't generally suck? - How do I send my fix back up to the trunk? - How do I record my work in the bug tracker? (If time permits) now let's try writing a test for a gap in test coverage (not necessarily on the code we just worked on - this doesn't have to be fake) DON'T ANSWER THESE! I need to carefully guard my sincere ignorance through Saturday! (Actually, I already have a pretty good idea about some of them, but I don't want my ignorance to become any less sincere than it already is.) But, if you're David or Dan or anybody else who's going to be there, you may want to ponder how you'll guide me through it. But what I want to know from all of you is: what other questions should be on my list? I was going to address this only to David, my primary audience/instructor volunteer, but I thought it wouldn't hurt to get input from the rest of you. Thank you all! -- - Catherine http://catherinedevlin.blogspot.com/ *** PyOhio 2010 * July 31 - Aug 1 * Columbus, OH * pyohio.org ***