[Fedora-join] My experience as a wannabe contributor

[Alain Vigne]

Hi, I am Alain, FAS: avigne

As discussed today in #fedora-devel, here is some feedback about my
experience trying to join Fedora as a contributor -> packager.

TLDR: Adding a new package and become a Fedora packager is NOT easy.

I am not a computer scientist, but as an Integrated Circuit designer, I am
using eCAD proprietary tools heavily.
With my years of experience, I came up to know how to use Fedora, and I
like this distro because it is reliable, and fairly up to date with
software technologies.

When Fedora FEL spin was alive, I picked up some tools, and slowly learn
how to use them. gEDA, PCB, NGspice, GerbV, etc...
At some point, 2 years ago, I thought Open Source world gave me a lot, it
was time to give back... So I contacted the pcb-rnd project [1], and
started to contribute code around GTK, and GUI aspects of the application.

Naturally, as I am developing with a Fedora system, I thought it could be
nice to have pcb-rnd for Fedora... I had no clue on how to proceed, and
first, I tried to find someone who can do that for me...
Found no one. (I should have known :).

Time passes by, and one day a pcb-rnd Mageia contributor showed me the
.spec file he wrote for Mageia. I was curious about what was behind all
those commands and how this "recipe" (the .spec file) can lead to a package.
So I dug into the documentation (mainly Fedora wiki) learning how to first
build an RPM, then after a successful local "mock", my curiosity was
satisfied. I thought I understood the purpose of those tools (rpmbuild,
rpmlint, mock).

That is when I started to think about contributing this package to Fedora.
"It should be easy, I have the recipe, I just need to find where to
check-in the .spec file..." Easy thought, no ?
Unfortunately, no, this is not easy.

First, there are tons of pages describing the process, and what to do. In
theory the process is well described.
In practice, I got stuck in the "need a sponsor" phase where I think there
is kinda chicken-and-egg problem for a new contributor.

I might detail that, later, if someone is interested in this list.

My feeling today, 6 months after I jumped in the unknown is not very much
positive:
I had to register, open accounts, leave traces on many systems before being
able to .... get nothing at the moment

- Bugzilla
- FAS
- COPR
- mailing list
- Freenode registration

etc...
I feel like someone who has a complicated map under the eyes, walk, try and
error to make sense of the map, up to a point where the map says: next step
is "find a sponsor" and I have no idea how this is being done.
And time passes by... Slowly. I am silently ignored.

Somebody says today : "Do informal reviews [a suggestion on the wiki, but
what can I suggest ? I have no experience ->chicken and egg problem], make
some mails, fill some bugs and you will get noticed".
I think this is the problem: nobody noticed, it seems nobody cares having a
new volunteer.

So, I am concluding: Fedora = too big ship, mainly automated, with a lot of
processes (procedures, way of working) and a community not open to new
contributors [I recall, my experience is only about contributing a new
package], because this is too complicated (which I agree and understand).

That said, I am a patient man, and I have done all this travel not to being
stop by a wall. I spent my life trying to get around, over, across... so
many walls, so, I won't surrender here !
Thanks for reading till that point, and let us open the debate.

Kind regards
Alain
PS: I am French, not EN native speaker, pardon my language if it does not
make sense to you.

[1] http://repo.hu/projects/pcb-rnd/

[Brian (bex) Exelbierd]

+packaging list

Thank you for taking the time to describe your challenges. I am
adding the packaging list as they are in a position to help with some
of these issues and to consider where more docs may be useful.

I am not sure how to help on the package reviews side. I personally
only have one package in Fedora and my role in the project made it
easy to find a reviewer. But, you shouldn't have to be the FCAIC to
make getting a reviewer easy. I know that we are working on more
automation in these areas to make review less human-labor intensive.
However, that doesn't help you today.

I hope we will hear some news from FPC about this.

regards,

bex

Post by Alain Vigne
Hi, I am Alain, FAS: avigne
As discussed today in #fedora-devel, here is some feedback about my experience trying to join Fedora as a contributor -> packager.
TLDR: Adding a new package and become a Fedora packager is NOT easy.
I am not a computer scientist, but as an Integrated Circuit designer, I am using eCAD proprietary tools heavily.
With my years of experience, I came up to know how to use Fedora, and I like this distro because it is reliable, and fairly up to date with software technologies.
When Fedora FEL spin was alive, I picked up some tools, and slowly learn how to use them. gEDA, PCB, NGspice, GerbV, etc...
At some point, 2 years ago, I thought Open Source world gave me a lot, it was time to give back... So I contacted the pcb-rnd project [1], and started to contribute code around GTK, and GUI aspects of the application.
Naturally, as I am developing with a Fedora system, I thought it could be nice to have pcb-rnd for Fedora... I had no clue on how to proceed, and first, I tried to find someone who can do that for me...
Found no one. (I should have known :).
Time passes by, and one day a pcb-rnd Mageia contributor showed me the .spec file he wrote for Mageia. I was curious about what was behind all those commands and how this "recipe" (the .spec file) can lead to a package.
So I dug into the documentation (mainly Fedora wiki) learning how to first build an RPM, then after a successful local "mock", my curiosity was satisfied. I thought I understood the purpose of those tools (rpmbuild, rpmlint, mock).
That is when I started to think about contributing this package to Fedora. "It should be easy, I have the recipe, I just need to find where to check-in the .spec file..." Easy thought, no ?
Unfortunately, no, this is not easy.
First, there are tons of pages describing the process, and what to do. In theory the process is well described.
In practice, I got stuck in the "need a sponsor" phase where I think there is kinda chicken-and-egg problem for a new contributor.
I might detail that, later, if someone is interested in this list.
I had to register, open accounts, leave traces on many systems before being able to .... get nothing at the moment
Bugzilla
FAS
COPR
mailing list
Freenode registration
etc...
I feel like someone who has a complicated map under the eyes, walk, try and error to make sense of the map, up to a point where the map says: next step is "find a sponsor" and I have no idea how this is being done.
And time passes by... Slowly. I am silently ignored.
Somebody says today : "Do informal reviews [a suggestion on the wiki, but what can I suggest ? I have no experience ->chicken and egg problem], make some mails, fill some bugs and you will get noticed".
I think this is the problem: nobody noticed, it seems nobody cares having a new volunteer.
So, I am concluding: Fedora = too big ship, mainly automated, with a lot of processes (procedures, way of working) and a community not open to new contributors [I recall, my experience is only about contributing a new package], because this is too complicated (which I agree and understand).
That said, I am a patient man, and I have done all this travel not to being stop by a wall. I spent my life trying to get around, over, across... so many walls, so, I won't surrender here !
Thanks for reading till that point, and let us open the debate.
Kind regards
Alain
PS: I am French, not EN native speaker, pardon my language if it does not make sense to you.
[1] http://repo.hu/projects/pcb-rnd/
--
Alain V.
_______________________________________________
Fedora Code of Conduct: https://getfedora.org/code-of-conduct.html
List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines

--
Brian (bex) Exelbierd | ***@redhat.com | ***@pobox.com
Fedora Community Action & Impact Coordinator
@bexelbie | http://www.winglemeyer.org
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[Iñaki Ucar]

I see very fair points in Alain's message. I found my way to become a
packager a month ago or so, and I perfectly recognise some resemblance
to the alluded chicken-egg issue in some procedures. It is true that I
managed to walk down this path in just a couple of weeks, but this is
because I had free time and I invested almost all that free time in
this endeavour.

On the one hand, if we want Fedora to continue to be reliable, then
the process has to be rigorous and demanding. And I have to say that I
found the extensive documentation extremely detailed (in a good sense,
because the process is explained step by step) and clearly written,
particularly the "Join the package collection maintainers" guidelines
and the packaging guidelines. But on the other hand, Fedora wants to
be "at the edge", so obviously there is some trade-off here.

I understand the need for the sponsorship model: someone has to check
that newbies like us don't break things. But at the same time, this is
clearly a bottleneck if nobody knows you. I take this opportunity to
describe the most difficult thing I found in the whole process: how to
prove yourself. In my case, I was the upstream maintainer of my first
package, which I understand that facilitates things. But still,
packaging is quite different from developing.

"Do informal reviews", the guide says, and everybody says. Ok, but
when you are new to this, you have to spend *a lot* of time in a
review, because all the time you have to check this or that guide
again, and read other related SPECs, and read other related reviews.
And then I found Robert-André Mauchin, among others, who does an
*impressive* reviewing work for Fedora, but man, you are simply too
fast for newbies! :) Even with all that free time in those weeks,
every time I saw a new review request, I was in a race against time to
provide some meaningful comments. Other options were to provide some
irrelevant comments to likewise irrelevant and forgotten old review
requests... but that is probably pointless.

That said, the process as a whole is quite good and well-explained.
But we can't afford losing contributors like Alain, so something has
to improve. I don't know what, I'm just a newbie, but something. And
for those of you who reached this point, sorry for this moan.

Iñaki

Post by Brian (bex) Exelbierd
+packaging list
Thank you for taking the time to describe your challenges. I am
adding the packaging list as they are in a position to help with some
of these issues and to consider where more docs may be useful.
I am not sure how to help on the package reviews side. I personally
only have one package in Fedora and my role in the project made it
easy to find a reviewer. But, you shouldn't have to be the FCAIC to
make getting a reviewer easy. I know that we are working on more
automation in these areas to make review less human-labor intensive.
However, that doesn't help you today.
I hope we will hear some news from FPC about this.
regards,
bex

Post by Alain Vigne
Hi, I am Alain, FAS: avigne
As discussed today in #fedora-devel, here is some feedback about my experience trying to join Fedora as a contributor -> packager.
TLDR: Adding a new package and become a Fedora packager is NOT easy.
I am not a computer scientist, but as an Integrated Circuit designer, I am using eCAD proprietary tools heavily.
With my years of experience, I came up to know how to use Fedora, and I like this distro because it is reliable, and fairly up to date with software technologies.
When Fedora FEL spin was alive, I picked up some tools, and slowly learn how to use them. gEDA, PCB, NGspice, GerbV, etc...
At some point, 2 years ago, I thought Open Source world gave me a lot, it was time to give back... So I contacted the pcb-rnd project [1], and started to contribute code around GTK, and GUI aspects of the application.
Naturally, as I am developing with a Fedora system, I thought it could be nice to have pcb-rnd for Fedora... I had no clue on how to proceed, and first, I tried to find someone who can do that for me...
Found no one. (I should have known :).
Time passes by, and one day a pcb-rnd Mageia contributor showed me the .spec file he wrote for Mageia. I was curious about what was behind all those commands and how this "recipe" (the .spec file) can lead to a package.
So I dug into the documentation (mainly Fedora wiki) learning how to first build an RPM, then after a successful local "mock", my curiosity was satisfied. I thought I understood the purpose of those tools (rpmbuild, rpmlint, mock).
That is when I started to think about contributing this package to Fedora. "It should be easy, I have the recipe, I just need to find where to check-in the .spec file..." Easy thought, no ?
Unfortunately, no, this is not easy.
First, there are tons of pages describing the process, and what to do. In theory the process is well described.
In practice, I got stuck in the "need a sponsor" phase where I think there is kinda chicken-and-egg problem for a new contributor.
I might detail that, later, if someone is interested in this list.
I had to register, open accounts, leave traces on many systems before being able to .... get nothing at the moment
Bugzilla
FAS
COPR
mailing list
Freenode registration
etc...
I feel like someone who has a complicated map under the eyes, walk, try and error to make sense of the map, up to a point where the map says: next step is "find a sponsor" and I have no idea how this is being done.
And time passes by... Slowly. I am silently ignored.
Somebody says today : "Do informal reviews [a suggestion on the wiki, but what can I suggest ? I have no experience ->chicken and egg problem], make some mails, fill some bugs and you will get noticed".
I think this is the problem: nobody noticed, it seems nobody cares having a new volunteer.
So, I am concluding: Fedora = too big ship, mainly automated, with a lot of processes (procedures, way of working) and a community not open to new contributors [I recall, my experience is only about contributing a new package], because this is too complicated (which I agree and understand).
That said, I am a patient man, and I have done all this travel not to being stop by a wall. I spent my life trying to get around, over, across... so many walls, so, I won't surrender here !
Thanks for reading till that point, and let us open the debate.
Kind regards
Alain
PS: I am French, not EN native speaker, pardon my language if it does not make sense to you.
[1] http://repo.hu/projects/pcb-rnd/
--
Alain V.
_______________________________________________
Fedora Code of Conduct: https://getfedora.org/code-of-conduct.html
List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines

--
Fedora Community Action & Impact Coordinator
@bexelbie | http://www.winglemeyer.org
_______________________________________________
Fedora Code of Conduct: https://getfedora.org/code-of-conduct.html
List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines

[Ankur Sinha]

<snip>
That said, the process as a whole is quite good and well-explained.
But we can't afford losing contributors like Alain, so something has
to improve. I don't know what, I'm just a newbie, but something. And
for those of you who reached this point, sorry for this moan.

+1

Alain has been speaking to us in the IRC channel too. The issue here
seems to be more that in spite of sending a few e-mails to the devel
list asking for a sponsor, he has been unable to attract one's
attention.

I do not know how many sponsors we have. I expected that we had enough.
I reckon we can gather some information on this from FAS if that'll be
useful to look at?

In the meantime, I suggested Alain file a ticket here requesting a
sponsor: https://pagure.io/packager-sponsors/

While we are on the topic, is this page easy enough to read and
understand in its current state?

https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/How_to_get_sponsored_into_the_packager_group

[Ankur Sinha]

Hello everyone,

I am happy to report that avigne's ticket was accepted and he is now a
Fedora package maintainer. Welcome to the group! :)

https://pagure.io/packager-sponsors/issue/367#comment-535434

We have noted the experience, and we'll try to keep an eye on people
looking to get sponsored so that we can be proactive rather than
reactive in helping them get through.

[Ankur Sinha]

<snip>
We have noted the experience, and we'll try to keep an eye on people
looking to get sponsored so that we can be proactive rather than
reactive in helping them get through.

I've filed a ticket regarding this:
https://pagure.io/fedora-join/Fedora-Join/issue/86
"Keeping an eye on contributors looking for sponsorship to various groups"

We'll discuss this at tomorrow's meeting. Please drop your comments on
the ticket if you cannot attend the meeting too.

[Alain Vigne]

Back from a business trip, I had the pleasure to find my proposal accepted... :)
I am grateful to you, Ankur, and people I met on IRC, as well as to
Robert-Andre for his reviews and approval, and of course, I am
grateful to my new sponsor.

What seems to have been the most efficient for finding a sponsor, was
to open this issue :
https://pagure.io/packager-sponsors/issue/367

Which means, knowing the existence of a "packager-sponsors" project
in Fedora pagure... !
Thank you Ankur for the pointer, I could not find elsewhere.

I am now able to go one step further, and hope I can provide help and
guidance to others, as my journey with Fedora contribution is going
on.
Thanks again to all, and best regards
Alain

Post by Ankur Sinha

<snip>
We have noted the experience, and we'll try to keep an eye on people
looking to get sponsored so that we can be proactive rather than
reactive in helping them get through.

https://pagure.io/fedora-join/Fedora-Join/issue/86
"Keeping an eye on contributors looking for sponsorship to various groups"
We'll discuss this at tomorrow's meeting. Please drop your comments on
the ticket if you cannot attend the meeting too.
--
Thanks,
Regards,
Ankur Sinha "FranciscoD"
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/User:Ankursinha
Time zone: Europe/London

--
Alain V.
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