Re: contributing to Emacs

[Konstantin Kharlamov]

On Sun, 2023-06-18 at 10:59 +0200, Dr. Arne Babenhauserheide wrote:
> 
> Konstantin Kharlamov <hi-angel@yandex.ru> writes:
> 
> > On Sat, 2023-06-17 at 14:36 -0400, Alfred M. Szmidt wrote:
> > open sources projects only requires finding out their upstream URL,
> 
> And usually creating an account, putting SSH keys into it, and so forth …
> 
> > in Emacs case you
> > also need to go read HUGE "Sending patches" section.
> 
> This sounds like a writing problem: such a section should be quick to
> read. Do you have concrete ideas how to slim this down?
> 
> Maybe with some simple examples how to send the patches.

Well… Yes. I see that the section "Sending Patches" is actually mixed up also
with the information about what changes should be contained in it. It is a
useful information, but I think it could be great if that was *on the same page*
but *in a separate paragraph*. This would allow a person to immediately know
which part is related to just "how to send a patch" and which is about the
commit message and stuff like that.

I can send the changes if there's any interest.

> > And then if that's not enough, from what I've seen maintainers also
> > expect you to have read CONTRIBUTE section, which is absolutely large,
> > much bigger than "Sending patches". (to be fair, if you are a new
> > contributor, you won't know it exists because "Sending patches" has no
> > mention of it).
> 
> Same here. I see quite a bit of explanation in the CONTRIBUTE file that
> makes that longer than the information a contributor really has to know.

Eli said elsewhere that reading this file isn't required, so whatever. The
"Sending Patches" section does not refer to it anyway.

> > more complicated. You see: these are complete no-brainer in 90% of projects.
> > But
> > every time I contribute here I have to think about such stuff which is
> > completely
> > irrelevant to the changes being sent.
> > And how do you even get a link where to send new patch revision? I have two
> > dozens
> > email notifications coming to my email everyday. So I will have to search
> > through all
> > that stuff.
> 
> Can this be improved with changes to debbug emails sent? Or to the
> debbug web interface?
> 
> For a github project (to name the elefant in the room) you also have to
> know the URL, but there it feels easier. Can we make that easier in the
> existing infrastructure?

I will need to think about that, but I would guess there should be ways.