<div>Hi,</div><div>I’ve thought about this issue in the past too, and would be happy to help write some content or at least proofread / contribute tidbits to a guide for new developers.</div><div><br></div><div>As pointed out in this thread, a lot of Swift infrastructure and paradigms comes from the LLVM community, but spelling that out in a “Getting Started” guide would be nice. It’d also be worth gathering some tips & tricks for developing & debugging issues, using Xcode or otherwise.</div><div><br></div><div>Would a Markdown document in the apple/swift repo be the best place for such a thing?</div><div><br></div><div><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div>On Tue, Jun 20, 2017 at 12:37 PM Halen Wooten via swift-dev <<a href="mailto:swift-dev@swift.org">swift-dev@swift.org</a>> wrote:<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">Hi,<br>
<br>
I would like to start a discussion about getting started with the<br>
Swift Compiler. The end goal is to see if there are ways we can help<br>
newcomers to the compiler get started and more quickly grow into a<br>
more effective contributor. The motivation is that I've had a<br>
surprising amount of trouble with my starter bug. Swift is amazing and<br>
I would love to contribute more regularly, but I also don't want to<br>
burden the core team.<br>
<br>
I know that documentation on a huge project like this is a<br>
non-starter, but I wonder if we could have better information on the<br>
contribution process, which likely wouldn't change frequently. For<br>
example, I learned through a conference talk that Swift uses LLVM's<br>
lit testing. I couldn't find that in any of Swift's documentation. The<br>
docs explain how to run tests, but not how to write them. I would be<br>
happy to help out with documentation if we can decide on changes that<br>
would be useful.<br>
<br>
Also, after I'm able to get my starter bug merged, I have no idea<br>
where to go from there. I don't want to take another starter bug and<br>
deprive someone else of the opportunity to contribute (although maybe<br>
that's an unnecessary restriction I'm placing on myself), but I'm also<br>
not in a place where I could take on something much larger.<br>
<br>
The learning curve for a compiler is always going to be high, but does<br>
anyone have ideas on how we could assist newcomers with their first<br>
starter bug and then transitioning into something larger?<br>
<br>
Thanks,<br>
<br>
Halen<br>
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