Questions about developing Emacs

Questions about developing Emacs

[Federico Tedin]

Hi all,

Over the past year and a half (~) I've started using Emacs, and at the
same time have been trying to improve it by fixing and/or adding stuff
from the bug tracker. I've managed to reach a workflow that more or
less works for me, but I think there's still a lot of room for
improvement. So here's a couple of questions that I have for anyone
interested in providing some advice:

- Will replies to older bugs (say, 1 or 2 years old) still get noticed
by the maintainers? I'm not sure how the visibility for this works. I
usually tend to look for bugs without any replies (that I believe I
can fix), but sometimes no recent ones are available, so I have to
look further back.
- Is there any way to find bugs that will involve more C coding? I'm
interested in improving that set of skills, but most bugs/additions
seem to require much more Elisp coding.
- What's the best way of moving from fixing small things, onto
adding/modifying larger parts of how Emacs works? I imagine that this
greatly depends on the amount of time spent working on the project.

Thanks in advance for any answers or comments.
- Fede

Re: Questions about developing Emacs

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Federico Tedin <federicotedin@gmail.com>
> Date: Wed, 5 Feb 2020 18:40:18 +0100
> 
> - Will replies to older bugs (say, 1 or 2 years old) still get noticed
> by the maintainers?

Yes.  But if no one has anything intelligent to say, you might not see
any responses, even though your replies will certainly be read and
considered.

> - Is there any way to find bugs that will involve more C coding?

Bugs that report crashes are generally likely to lead to changes in C.
There are also others, but I'm not sure how you could detect them.

> - What's the best way of moving from fixing small things, onto
> adding/modifying larger parts of how Emacs works?

I'd suggest picking up a couple of areas of Emacs in which you are
interested the most, and working on related problems.  Each time you
work on some problem, try to dig into the surrounding code and
understand more than strictly required for fixing the problem at
hand.  With time, you will build expertise in those areas, and will
feel more confident with more significant changes and new
developments.

TIA

Re: Questions about developing Emacs

[Federico Tedin]

>> From: Federico Tedin <federicotedin@gmail.com>
>> Date: Wed, 5 Feb 2020 18:40:18 +0100
>> 
>> - Will replies to older bugs (say, 1 or 2 years old) still get noticed
>> by the maintainers?
>
> Yes.  But if no one has anything intelligent to say, you might not see
> any responses, even though your replies will certainly be read and
> considered.
>
>> - Is there any way to find bugs that will involve more C coding?
>
> Bugs that report crashes are generally likely to lead to changes in C.
> There are also others, but I'm not sure how you could detect them.
>
>> - What's the best way of moving from fixing small things, onto
>> adding/modifying larger parts of how Emacs works?
>
> I'd suggest picking up a couple of areas of Emacs in which you are
> interested the most, and working on related problems.  Each time you
> work on some problem, try to dig into the surrounding code and
> understand more than strictly required for fixing the problem at
> hand.  With time, you will build expertise in those areas, and will
> feel more confident with more significant changes and new
> developments.
>
> TIA

That's very helpful, thank you Eli!

Re: Questions about developing Emacs

[Stefan Monnier]

> - Will replies to older bugs (say, 1 or 2 years old) still get noticed
> by the maintainers?

All emails about bug reports get sent to the mailing-list
bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org, so yes it will be seen by those who subscribe to
this list. You can also explicitly add a `Cc:` if you want input from
someone in particular (e.g. I don't subscribe to bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org
any more, so if you want my input on a particular bug, make sure I'm in
the `Cc:`).

> - What's the best way of moving from fixing small things, onto
> adding/modifying larger parts of how Emacs works? I imagine that this
> greatly depends on the amount of time spent working on the project.

Beside Eli's answer, you might also get ideas from discussions (where
members of emacs-devel may be able to help you move from a local
problem to a more far-reaching solution).


        Stefan

Re: Questions about developing Emacs

[Federico Tedin]

>> - Will replies to older bugs (say, 1 or 2 years old) still get noticed
>> by the maintainers?
>
> All emails about bug reports get sent to the mailing-list
> bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org, so yes it will be seen by those who subscribe to
> this list. You can also explicitly add a `Cc:` if you want input from
> someone in particular (e.g. I don't subscribe to bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org
> any more, so if you want my input on a particular bug, make sure I'm in
> the `Cc:`).
>
>> - What's the best way of moving from fixing small things, onto
>> adding/modifying larger parts of how Emacs works? I imagine that this
>> greatly depends on the amount of time spent working on the project.
>
> Beside Eli's answer, you might also get ideas from discussions (where
> members of emacs-devel may be able to help you move from a local
> problem to a more far-reaching solution).
>
>
>         Stefan

I'm taking note of both things. Thanks!