Re: Development suggestions from an ENSIME developer

[Lars Ingebrigtsen <larsi@gnus.org>]

Christian Kruse <cjk@defunct.ch> writes:

> I think he has a point: it is *very* hard to get into Emacs
> coding. I tried it more than once but failed. Documentation seems very
> distributed (for a look here, for b look over there, ...), a clear
> step-by-step guide to get a build environment including running tests
> seems to be missing. E.g. why is there no "contribute" document on the
> shiny new website?

Yeah, I agree that the documentation for getting started is rather
distributed.  And the recipe (on GNU/Linux systems) is so trivial.

It would be nice to have it emphasised just how easy it is somewhere
central, like:

----
Cut and paste these five lines and you have a complete working Emacs
that you can hack and send patches to:

sudo apt-get build-dep emacs24
git clone git://git.savannah.gnu.org/emacs.git
cd emacs
make
./src/emacs &

Send patches via `M-x report-emacs-bug'.  Happy hacking!
----

Of course, if you want to make larger changes then you have to know
about ChangeLog formats and assignments and testing and etc etc etc, but
for people starting out, hacking on and contributing to Emacs is so easy
it's kinda difficult to believe, which is perhaps why people imagine it
to be difficult.  :-)

-- 
(domestic pets only, the antidote for overdose, milk.)
   bloggy blog: http://lars.ingebrigtsen.no