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0 pointshighspeedmobile6y ago0 comments

I pretty much agree with this. For example, the BSD Handbook and documentation is the point of call for a newbie entering into the community and the codebase is much more readable than the Linux kernel.

Last time I checked, the kernel-newbies site doesn't seem to be beginner friendly and aside from following the IRC channel, the mailing list is still the way to do code reviews there, which is quite frankly pre-historic and very unfriendly for beginners sending patches at best.

At least for FreeBSD, they uses Phabricator for code reviews, HaikuOS uses Gerrit and SerenityOS uses GitHub and they seem to be the other OSes that have both good documentation about their kernels and their userland APIs. Perfect places to start learning about operating systems and kernels in general.

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jfkebwjsbx6y ago

Prehistoric? It is actually how the Git workflow was designed to work, and it is a standard method that does not require third-party services nor tools. Just your mail agent.

Sending patches is as easy as sending one in GitHub or any other web-based system. The problem is that you (and many others) have never done it, and so anything different is harder.

You should consider that if learning a handful of CLI commands is such a problem for you, perhaps it is not the system that is being unfriendly to you, but that you are unfriendly to learning anything else that is not your way.

highspeedmobileOP6y ago

> Sending patches is as easy as sending one in GitHub or any other web-based system.

Its still prehistoric in projects like the Linux Kernel, from a beginners point of view compared to GitHub, Gerrit or GitLab, which most of the active contributors are already working at large companies who's work requires contributing to it, thus already have invested in time and money learning the contribution process. To look at the LKML and do code reviews via back and forth emails looks simple for a veteran Linux developer at a large company but very arcane for a student sending a patch to the kernel.

> The problem is that you (and many others) have never done it, and so anything different is harder.

Your assumption is quite funny here as I have done both and I can tell you that most of the beginners particularly students are introduced into open-source via GitHub or even GitLab these days and its used as a starting point into contributing to a OS project. IIRC, ReactOS and FreeBSD has retained more student contributors from Google Summer of Code than say GNU/Hurd, by both improving the contribution process for beginners. I still wouldn't recommend beginners to learn about OSes in general by contributing to the Linux kernel due to the above reasons. Project making contributions more accessible for beginners isn't a bad thing, its actually how they attract potential long term contributors to stay on, rather than to make things simple only for veteran developers.

> You should consider that if learning a handful of CLI commands is such a problem for you, perhaps it is not the system that is being unfriendly to you, but that you are unfriendly to learning anything else that is not your way.

There's my point, it is still beginner unfriendly. Beginners these days would start with Github or Gitlab with a GUI to send PRs to a different OS project and wouldn't bother learning tons of CLI commands to send a patch in a email + code reviews. It is therefore favours veteran developers at large companies who stay on being long term contributors than the old days of random Linux enthusiasts doing this, which I'm very surprised you don't see the contribution process prehistoric from a beginners eyes. Perhaps something needs to change...

salawat6y ago

Here's the thing.

Take GitHub, and boil it down, and it's a mish mash of version control, diff, and patch, all plastered over with a shiny HTTP veneer.

Diff/patch, git, and email alone are the basic tools you need. Even before VCS was a really big thing, that is how software changes were propagated around.

There is nothing wrong with sticking with the basics. In fact, I flat out refuse to tell newbies that they should host everything on GitHub, or GitLab. It's becoming a twisted new form of "social media-esque" hype.

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megous6y ago

Well, if you want to be more likely to get reaction from any one of 10 or so odd people the typical patch series goes to directly (sometimes simply because they may have contributed some code to some file you're also modifying now) + hundreds more on a bunch of subsys and more general mailing lists, forcing them to register on some random web service of your choice and then monitor it for further communication and replies and patch series revisions is not the easiest proposition.

Everyone knows how to reply to an e-mail. It's very low effort way to find interested people to review your patch/and get some reaction from maintainers.

That's how it is now. That's not to say, current system is not somewhat problematic to some maintainers/subsystems, but that's not really your businesss as a contributor.

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jfkebwjsbx6y ago

If you cannot by arsed to learn a few new development tools or workflows, I am sorry but this field is likely to burn you out very soon, be it Linux kernel development, the next shiny GitHub replacement or the new edition of HTML/CSS/whatever.

And let's not start about learning the myriad of tools you gotta learn to do in professional Linux kernel development (or any kind of specialized development for that matter).

If you want to educate your students on being one more cog in the machine and make them complacent on learning the bare minimum, that's on you. I for sure wasn't taught like that.

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jfkebwjsbx6y ago

Prehistoric? It is actually how the Git workflow was designed to work, and it is a standard method that does not require third-party services nor tools. Just your mail agent.

Sending patches is as easy as sending one in GitHub or any other web-based system. The problem is that you (and many others) have never done it, and so anything different is harder.

highspeedmobileOP6y ago

> Sending patches is as easy as sending one in GitHub or any other web-based system.

> The problem is that you (and many others) have never done it, and so anything different is harder.

salawat6y ago

Here's the thing.

Take GitHub, and boil it down, and it's a mish mash of version control, diff, and patch, all plastered over with a shiny HTTP veneer.

Diff/patch, git, and email alone are the basic tools you need. Even before VCS was a really big thing, that is how software changes were propagated around.

1 more reply

megous6y ago

Everyone knows how to reply to an e-mail. It's very low effort way to find interested people to review your patch/and get some reaction from maintainers.

That's how it is now. That's not to say, current system is not somewhat problematic to some maintainers/subsystems, but that's not really your businesss as a contributor.

1 more reply

jfkebwjsbx6y ago

And let's not start about learning the myriad of tools you gotta learn to do in professional Linux kernel development (or any kind of specialized development for that matter).

If you want to educate your students on being one more cog in the machine and make them complacent on learning the bare minimum, that's on you. I for sure wasn't taught like that.

1 more reply

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse