24 Pull Requests - Giving little gifts of code for Christmas • Hacker News Board

Re: 24 Pull Requests - Giving little gifts of code for Christmas

#31

Post by Samuel_Michon » Sat, Dec 01, 2012, 5:42 AM UTC

cpeterso wrote: post #23

Why just December? (And why Christmas?) How about a year-round effort like "Pull Request Thursdays" or "First Thursday Pull Requests" (each month)?

I reckon they got the idea from http://www.24ways.org, which in turn is inspired by the advent calendar (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advent_calendar).

"The traditional [advent] calendar consists of two pieces of card stock on top of each other. Twenty-four doors are cut out in the top layer, with a number ranging from one to twenty-four on each. Beginning on the first day of December, one door is opened each day [containing a chocolate and/or showing an illustration related to Christmas], counting down the days remaining until Christmas Eve, from one to twenty-four where the 24th door often holds an extra surprise like an extra large piece of chocolate."

Re: 24 Pull Requests - Giving little gifts of code for Christmas

#32

Post by josteink » Sat, Dec 01, 2012, 9:52 AM UTC

I've sent one pull-request so far, but it's not showing on the dashboard.

I guess someone should take a look at the 24pullrequests repo itself and get some bugs fixed ;)

Re: 24 Pull Requests - Giving little gifts of code for Christmas

#33

Post by dkhenry » Sat, Dec 01, 2012, 1:51 PM UTC

I don't think many people will make the 24 pull requests, but for kicks and giggles I submitted my pet project to receive some love

http://www.github.com//dkheny/minestat

Re: 24 Pull Requests - Giving little gifts of code for Christmas

#34

Post by bronson » Sat, Dec 01, 2012, 4:14 PM UTC

sophacles wrote: post #20

samspot wrote: post #11

1 per day for projects I am unfamiliar with seems aggressive. I wonder if I would even be able to add any value with such a shallow understanding of the projects. I think 1/week is probably more reasonable if you are trying to get people who don't contribute to get involved.

When I get involved with projects, I have a lot of potential up front to contribute, and try to do so. Some problems are best handled by those unfamiliar with the project. Examples: * Documentation fixes - clarifications of parts you find confusing, inconsistencies with current behavior, etc. * Convention fixes - are most binary checks names IsFoo() but one is named Foo_exists() ? do a quick refactor patch for it. Is…

One more: tests! Contribute a few more tests to a project's test suite. Especially for the features that you rely on.

Re: 24 Pull Requests - Giving little gifts of code for Christmas

#35

Post by pronoiac » Sat, Dec 01, 2012, 6:31 PM UTC

dkhenry wrote: post #33

I don't think many people will make the 24 pull requests, but for kicks and giggles I submitted my pet project to receive some love http://www.github.com//dkheny/minestat

That 404s for me.

Edit: Perhaps you mean https://github.com/dkhenry/minestat

Re: 24 Pull Requests - Giving little gifts of code for Christmas

#36

Post by shabble » Sat, Dec 01, 2012, 7:33 PM UTC

sophacles wrote: post #22

andrewnez wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would it be ok if we used some of these tips as part of the introduction process on the site to help guide people who are new to contributing to open source?

Absolutely - I think that would be pretty awesome. I have to admit tho: I toyed with ironically denying it :P

Licence: "You may only use these tips for evil"

Re: 24 Pull Requests - Giving little gifts of code for Christmas

#37

Post by jetsnoc » Sun, Dec 02, 2012, 2:01 AM UTC

Okay, I bit. I forked the Redis repository and fixed a small warning when linking with clang to resolve issue #374 (nine months old but still open.) I just created the pull request. How long has it taken others for 24pullrequests to recognize my request?

Edit: It took only a few minutes.

Re: 24 Pull Requests - Giving little gifts of code for Christmas

#38

Post by jetsnoc » Sun, Dec 02, 2012, 6:48 AM UTC

I will be creating all 24 of my pull requests to one project. The prospect of a project manager seeing 24 new commits from someone he's never heard of made me think about how funny it would be if a group of hacker's created a "commit mob" like a social "flash mob" but once a week a few dozen developer's descend on to a project and help out creating a few hundred pull requests. If it was highly coordinated it could be as impressive looking as real flash mobs are. If the backlog is pre-chosen by the group and the mobsters pick which issues to work on it could be highly productive without anyone stepping on each other's work.

Re: 24 Pull Requests - Giving little gifts of code for Christmas

#39

Post by dspillett » Mon, Dec 03, 2012, 6:39 PM UTC

tikhonj wrote: post #14

dspillett wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I am starting to fear one-person projects no matter how great. Never rely on a one-person project unless you can support the code yourself if you find significant bugs. If that one person is busy or just plain unavailable and you can't investigate and possibly fix the problem yourself, you are out of luck. Obviously there are a few exceptions to that, for instance if the project is very widely used then you will ge…

Of course, given that it's a one-person project, chances are the code is relatively small and approachable. I think you are much more likely to be able to easily support modify a one-person project than something bigger. Now, clearly, supporting the code yourself will not always be an option or a good choice; it's just much more likely to be viable with a one-person project.

I agree, though you need to be careful to make sure you could maintain the project if needed, even though ideally you'll never have to, and you need to check that before you make use of it in anything important.

Many complaints about open source projects that go stagnant are due to people not doing this, and being stuck using something they can't enhance/fix because they don't have (and can't afford to buy) the expertise.