On Fri, Sep 08, 2006 at 09:01:59AM +0100, Mark Rogers wrote:
So the point I'm getting at is that the barrier to entry to FOSS development seems very high and I couldn't find any simple getting started guides (maybe I didn't look far enough). SVN is one of those packages which is really well documented, but I didn't need that - I just wanted to get the latest code onto my PC, know how to get updates, and how to submit patches. wxWidgets is similarly well documented but I simply couldn't compile it, and to be honest probably shouldn't have needed to: binary library files would have been enough for what I wanted to do.
I think one of the things that can be difficult is the major difference in "shape/philosophy" between development in a Unix(ish) environment and a Windows(ish) one.
I come from many years of Unix development (I started writing C on Unix sometime in the 1980s) and have done virtually no coding on MS/Windows machines.
I find it very difficult indeed to do anything useful programming wise on Windows, when Linux came along and allowed me into a familiar environment on a cheap PC that I could have at home it was wonderful!
In general I don't find too much difficulty in building things on my Slackware system though, inevitably, there are "dependency nightmares" sometimes.
There are so many applications out there which probably just need one or two line fixes here and there to improve them, but whilst the code change might take a few minutes (in my case that is how long it took to fix the bug that I was hunting for) it took about a fortnight of playing around to get to a position where I could start. (And doesn't C++ take a long time to compile!)
In some ways I think a bit of a significant learning curve may not be a bad idea. There needs to be some sort of level of competance before someone starts submitting code changes. I'm desperately trying not to sound elitist here! :-) I suppose it's akin to the problem of protecting Wikis from antisocial/incompetant people.