[PATCH] What's the quickest way to contribute?

[Oleh Krehel <o.krehel@tue.nl>]

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Hi all,

I like Emacs a lot and I'd like to contribute to the development.  I
have assigned the FSF Copyright and made some small contributions in
the past, but so far my contributions have been moving slower than
molasses.

For instance, this one-liner,
http://debbugs.gnu.org/cgi/bugreport.cgi?bug=19493, has been hanging
there for a few days now.

The other one, https://debbugs.gnu.org/cgi/bugreport.cgi?bug=15920, is
more than a year old.

This one, https://debbugs.gnu.org/cgi/bugreport.cgi?bug=19460, Stefan
himself asked me to report, and yet there's no answer so far.

A few questions/ possible answers follow on why this is:

1. My patches / bug reports are lame. Then I'd appreciate at least
some feedback pointing out the faults. I learn quickly.

2. I'm submitting to the wrong place, e.g. to the bug tracker instead
of the devel list or vice versa. I'd like to know the proper and
approved way to do this.

3. My patches / bug reports are low priority and are not worth
applying / responding to. Then please let me know the priority areas
in which contributions are more actively accepted.

4. The devs are swamped with bug reports and I should just wait a few
months more until my turn. Well, I could help out in that area, since
my intention is to start from small contributions into larger ones
until I get experienced enough to get push access and get my work
merged without a lengthy review. I could then help with the review of
other people's one-liners.

I've read http://lars.ingebrigtsen.no/2014/11/13/welcome-new-emacs-developers/
and http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/GitForEmacsDevs, but I didn't find
the answers to the questions that I'm posting here.

Finally, I attach one more patch that I'd like some feedback on.
I was browsing replace.el and found this type of code:

    (delq nil (mapcar #'(lambda (buf)
                          (when (buffer-live-p buf) buf))
                      bufs))

instead of this:

    (cl-remove-if-not #'buffer-live-p bufs)

If this were my package, I would change it without batting an eye,
since the latter code is more clear and algorithmically faster.
However, maybe my knowledge of Emacs's internals is lacking and the
current way is better.  Or maybe there's a policy against `cl-`
functions. Or maybe there's a policy of not fixing things that aren't
broke. I'd like to know these things.

regards,
Oleh

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From 1da7d6fb880834772ad17aed46872d49641e1f6b Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: Oleh Krehel <ohwoeowho@gmail.com>
Date: Thu, 8 Jan 2015 17:40:59 +0100
Subject: [PATCH] lisp/replace.el (occur-1): Use `cl-seq'.

* lisp/replace.el (occur-1): Use `cl-remove-if-not' and `cl-find-if'
  in favor of more complex operations.
---
 lisp/replace.el | 11 ++++++-----
 1 file changed, 6 insertions(+), 5 deletions(-)

diff --git a/lisp/replace.el b/lisp/replace.el
index e0636e0..b92e3cd 100644
--- a/lisp/replace.el
+++ b/lisp/replace.el
@@ -1416,14 +1416,15 @@ See also `multi-occur'."
   (unless buf-name
     (setq buf-name "*Occur*"))
   (let (occur-buf
-	(active-bufs (delq nil (mapcar #'(lambda (buf)
-					   (when (buffer-live-p buf) buf))
-				       bufs))))
+	(active-bufs
+         (cl-remove-if-not #'buffer-live-p bufs)))
     ;; Handle the case where one of the buffers we're searching is the
     ;; output buffer.  Just rename it.
-    (when (member buf-name (mapcar 'buffer-name active-bufs))
+    (when (cl-find-if
+           `(lambda (buf) (equal (buffer-name buf) ,buf-name))
+           active-bufs)
       (with-current-buffer (get-buffer buf-name)
-	(rename-uniquely)))
+        (rename-uniquely)))
 
     ;; Now find or create the output buffer.
     ;; If we just renamed that buffer, we will make a new one here.
-- 
1.8.4