Re: TODO list (was Re: Contributing with code)

On 3 January 2018 at 13:12, Patrick Krecker <pkrecker(at)gmail(dot)com> wrote:
> As a person looking to become a postgres contributor, perhaps I can
> offer some perspective on this. I think there is value in providing
> *some* starting point for new contributors in the form of concrete
> problems to solve. The value I hope to extract from the time spent on
> my first feature comes mostly from the learning experience and not
> from the acceptance of the feature itself. I would not be upset if my
> work was never accepted as long as I understand why. I expect most
> people picking features at random from a TODO list would have a
> similar outlook on their first contribution.

I agree with this. It was about 10 years ago when I first looked at
the TODO list and thought "I could do that!", so I did. I got lucky
and it was accepted, but without that list, I'd probably never have
written the patch and probably not be here today.

I'd say, anyone who looks at the TODO list, picks something and
implements it is doing it for a personal challenge and maybe a foot in
a door. We should not make doing that any harder for people.

For all the others who are implementing things because they need
PostgreSQL to that, then they've not used the TODO list for that so is
not a concern of this thread.

I think the warning that's on the TODO list [1] is a great idea.
Perhaps it should be bigger or more verbose.

[1] https://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/Todo

--
David Rowley http://www.2ndQuadrant.com/
PostgreSQL Development, 24x7 Support, Training & Services