[swift-dev] Pathway to becoming an effective contributor

[Halen Wooten]

Of course I find the doc that mentions lit testing as soon as I send
this. The other questions (and my offer to assist with documentation)
still remain.

Halen

On Tue, Jun 20, 2017 at 3:37 PM, Halen Wooten <swift at hpwooten.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I would like to start a discussion about getting started with the
> Swift Compiler. The end goal is to see if there are ways we can help
> newcomers to the compiler get started and more quickly grow into a
> more effective contributor. The motivation is that I've had a
> surprising amount of trouble with my starter bug. Swift is amazing and
> I would love to contribute more regularly, but I also don't want to
> burden the core team.
>
> I know that documentation on a huge project like this is a
> non-starter, but I wonder if we could have better information on the
> contribution process, which likely wouldn't change frequently. For
> example, I learned through a conference talk that Swift uses LLVM's
> lit testing. I couldn't find that in any of Swift's documentation. The
> docs explain how to run tests, but not how to write them. I would be
> happy to help out with documentation if we can decide on changes that
> would be useful.
>
> Also, after I'm able to get my starter bug merged, I have no idea
> where to go from there. I don't want to take another starter bug and
> deprive someone else of the opportunity to contribute (although maybe
> that's an unnecessary restriction I'm placing on myself), but I'm also
> not in a place where I could take on something much larger.
>
> The learning curve for a compiler is always going to be high, but does
> anyone have ideas on how we could assist newcomers with their first
> starter bug and then transitioning into something larger?
>
> Thanks,
>
> Halen