Re: contributing to Emacs

[Dr. Arne Babenhauserheide]

Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> writes:

>> From: "Dr. Arne Babenhauserheide" <arne_bab@web.de>
>> Cc: hi-angel@yandex.ru, ams@gnu.org, luangruo@yahoo.com, emacs-devel@gnu.org
>> Date: Sun, 18 Jun 2023 12:19:45 +0200
>> 
>> > People keep asking for more and more details to be described there, so
>> > what you expect doesn't stand the test of time and user expectations.
>> 
>> What would you do if CONTRIBUTING were a user interface? Would you
>> include every idea someone has?
>
> Who said anything about including "every idea"?

Sorry about that, it was too careless wording. I meant that 

> We try very hard to
> include there only what's really necessary and non-obvious, you can
> search the archives for discussions about CONTRIBUTE to see it for
> yourself.  But still, the instructions grow over time, because people
> ask questions about the details, and enough people here consider some
> of those details worthy to be included.

With instructions it’s similar as with code: At some point it’s
necessary to refactor, because incremental changes resulted in something
that’s harder to work with than necessary.

There are explanations *why* something is as it is — both in
CONTRIBUTING and in Sending Patches. These are not necessary for someone
wanting to submit a patch, but they are necessary for someone wanting to
improve the instructions or wondering "why that rule?" — which at least
to me is a common question when I see a list of rules.

⇒ not for first contact, but useful at the second or third patch.

>> > It is clear that you personally may not need everything there, but
>> > CONTRIBUTE is not for you and me, or others like we.
>> 
>> For whom *is* CONTRIBUTE?
>
> For people who only start contributing and need to study our
> conventions and requirements.  If they bother reading the file, of
> course.  (If they don't, we will inform them about the relevant
> conventions as part of the patch review process.)

This informing about convention causes load on the maintainers, so I
think we should increase the number of people who read instructions and
get enough information from them that they need not be informed about
convention ⇒ The shorter version I wrote is intended to reduce that load.

At this point I’d say that this may be better as a bug report for the
website. Where can I send these?

Best wishes,
Arne
-- 
Unpolitisch sein
heißt politisch sein,
ohne es zu merken.
draketo.de

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