[Numpy-discussion] Hoop jumping, and other sports

[Andras Deak]

On Thu, Feb 8, 2018 at 12:35 AM, Allan Haldane <allanhaldane at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 02/07/2018 04:26 PM, Charles R Harris wrote:
>> Hi All,
>>
>> I was thinking about things to do to simplify the NumPy development
>> process. One thing that came to mind was our use of prefixes on commits,
>> BUG, TST, etc. Those prefixes were originally introduced by David
>> Cournapeau when he was managing releases in order help him track commits
>> that might need backports. I like the prefixes, but now that we are
>> organized by PRs, rather than commits, the only place we really need
>> them, for some meaning of "need", is in the commit titles, and
>> maintainers can change and edit those without problems. So I would like
>> to propose that we no longer be picky about having them in the commit
>> summary line. Furthermore, that got me thinking that there are probably
>> other things we could do to simplify the development process. So I'd
>> like folks to weigh in with other ideas for simplification or complaints
>> about nit picky things that have annoyed them.
>>
>> Chuck
>
> When I was first contributing, the main obstacle was not the nitpicks
> but reading through all the contributor guidelines pages, as well as
> learning github. I also remember finding it hard to find that
> documentation in the first place.
>
> It is at
> https://docs.scipy.org/doc/numpy/dev/index.html
> and a shorter summary at
> https://docs.scipy.org/doc/numpy/dev/gitwash/development_workflow.html
>
> Maybe we should have a much more prominent link about how to contribute,
> eg on the main "README.md" front page, or at the start of the user
> guide, which links to a "really really" short contributing guide for
> someone who does not use github, maybe a screenful or two only. Even the
> short development workflow above has lots of info that usually isn't
> needed and takes a long time to read through.
>
> Allan
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As a new (though so far superficial) contributor I can say that I
didn't find it difficult at all to locate the resources needed for
contributing. I found the gitwash link very easily and naturally, and
I didn't find it too long nor confusing (but I did have a fresh
understanding of git itself, so I can't reliably assess the contents
from a git newcomer's standpoint). The willingness to touch numpy
without a thorough understanding of its internals is much more of a
barrier at least in my case.

András