Looking to become a new regular contributor

Looking to become a new regular contributor

[jamesaorson]

I have, for a long time, been looking for a meaningfully project to create, but I’ve come to realize that this is seemingly what everyone is doing, and instead I have decided it would be more helpful to others to work on an existing and well respected tool (like emacs).

On top of that, it will work to humble me as I read the code of RMS and others before me who made and are still making emacs what it is today.

I intend to devote the great majority of my leisure programming time to emacs development, and see how that goes after a few years. I have a stable job and don’t see this as just some resume fodder, but just want to continue to improve and start to also contribute.

I started using emacs only about 3 months ago, and I fell in love. I spent the greater part of those 3 months customizing emacs and using it as my entire interface for doing my grad school work, as a means of forcing myself to learn emacs. I have some fresh pain points as someone who came in with effectively zero background about emacs and some things I’d like to explore myself.

Before I pursue those things myself, what are the best ways to get involved in emacs at the current moment? I know I can look at the open TODOs and bugs for emacs today and I will definitely do so, but what is most likely to actually provide some benefit right now? Say there was some large effort being worked on that EVERYTHING else is sort of being tabled for. I would not want to run off and do something contradictory to that work, etc.

RE: [External] : Looking to become a new regular contributor

[Drew Adams]

Really good to hear. Welcome!

Eli or someone else will no doubt guide you further, but you can start by `C-h i contrib TAB RET', which takes you to node "Contributing to Emacs Development" in the Emacs manual.

Re: Looking to become a new regular contributor

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: jamesaorson@gmail.com
> Date: Mon, 4 Dec 2023 16:06:05 -0800
> 
> I have, for a long time, been looking for a meaningfully project to create, but I’ve come to realize that this is seemingly what everyone is doing, and instead I have decided it would be more helpful to others to work on an existing and well respected tool (like emacs).
> 
> On top of that, it will work to humble me as I read the code of RMS and others before me who made and are still making emacs what it is today.
> 
> I intend to devote the great majority of my leisure programming time to emacs development, and see how that goes after a few years. I have a stable job and don’t see this as just some resume fodder, but just want to continue to improve and start to also contribute.

Thank you.

> Before I pursue those things myself, what are the best ways to get involved in emacs at the current moment? I know I can look at the open TODOs and bugs for emacs today and I will definitely do so, but what is most likely to actually provide some benefit right now? Say there was some large effort being worked on that EVERYTHING else is sort of being tabled for. I would not want to run off and do something contradictory to that work, etc.

I suggest to subscribe to the bug-gnu-emacs mailing list and see if
any bugs reported there are something you could investigate and try
fixing.

There's also etc/TODO, which lists some ideas for improving Emacs.

Re: Looking to become a new regular contributor

[James Orson]

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Thanks Eli

I will look at those lists a bit later

On Mon, Dec 4, 2023 at 19:31 Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> wrote:

> > From: jamesaorson@gmail.com
> > Date: Mon, 4 Dec 2023 16:06:05 -0800
> >
> > I have, for a long time, been looking for a meaningfully project to
> create, but I’ve come to realize that this is seemingly what everyone is
> doing, and instead I have decided it would be more helpful to others to
> work on an existing and well respected tool (like emacs).
> >
> > On top of that, it will work to humble me as I read the code of RMS and
> others before me who made and are still making emacs what it is today.
> >
> > I intend to devote the great majority of my leisure programming time to
> emacs development, and see how that goes after a few years. I have a stable
> job and don’t see this as just some resume fodder, but just want to
> continue to improve and start to also contribute.
>
> Thank you.
>
> > Before I pursue those things myself, what are the best ways to get
> involved in emacs at the current moment? I know I can look at the open
> TODOs and bugs for emacs today and I will definitely do so, but what is
> most likely to actually provide some benefit right now? Say there was some
> large effort being worked on that EVERYTHING else is sort of being tabled
> for. I would not want to run off and do something contradictory to that
> work, etc.
>
> I suggest to subscribe to the bug-gnu-emacs mailing list and see if
> any bugs reported there are something you could investigate and try
> fixing.
>
> There's also etc/TODO, which lists some ideas for improving Emacs.
>

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