An Experience in Contributing to Open Source • Hacker News Board

Re: An Experience in Contributing to Open Source

#21

Post by iopq » Wed, Dec 24, 2014, 4:43 PM UTC

arafalov wrote: post #17

I decided a couple of years ago that my O/S focus would be Apache Solr. But I did not start by jumping into the source and trying to fix it. I started writing projects around it with Solr being a common-theme. And with the focus being the newbies and on-boarding experience. And, it turned out that there is lots of opportunities. I now run a Solr resource website ( http://www.solr-start.com ) which is quite appreciate…

I had a problem with full text search once. I used Solr and now I have an XML config problem.

Re: An Experience in Contributing to Open Source

#22

Post by sanderjd » Wed, Dec 24, 2014, 6:04 PM UTC

tnorthcutt wrote: post #18

STRML wrote: post #6

That's pretty much how it happens, in my experience. Contributing to OSS projects generally happens when you need it, and often stops when you don't / it isn't your job anymore. My most significant contributions to projects always happened when I was using them in my day job. It's inevitable that a project will have bugs, or you'll want a feature it doesn't have yet. I love it when people contribute instead of just o…

I love it when people contribute instead of just opening issues I understand the sentiment, but please keep in mind that the set of people who use a piece of software and are able to file a useful issue does not always (or probably never does) overlap completely with the set of people who are able to contribute code to a project. Well thought out issues can be valuable to an OSS project, and should IMO be thought of…

I totally agree with this. I would hate to think there are a bunch of issues with something I've made lurking out there but unreported because the people who discovered them didn't have the time or ability to fix them and felt bad about just filing an issue.

Re: An Experience in Contributing to Open Source

#23

Post by ndesaulniers » Wed, Dec 24, 2014, 7:16 PM UTC

arafalov wrote: post #17

I decided a couple of years ago that my O/S focus would be Apache Solr. But I did not start by jumping into the source and trying to fix it. I started writing projects around it with Solr being a common-theme. And with the focus being the newbies and on-boarding experience. And, it turned out that there is lots of opportunities. I now run a Solr resource website ( http://www.solr-start.com ) which is quite appreciate…

I think the FCC could use your help [0].

"it appears that nearly 680,000 of the comments were not transferred successfully from ECFS to the XML files. This is due to a technical error involving Apache Solr, an open source tool the FCC used to produce the XML files"

[0] http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/FCC-States-It-Misplaced-A...

Re: An Experience in Contributing to Open Source

#24

Post by arafalov » Wed, Dec 24, 2014, 9:24 PM UTC

iopq wrote: post #21

arafalov wrote: post #17

I decided a couple of years ago that my O/S focus would be Apache Solr. But I did not start by jumping into the source and trying to fix it. I started writing projects around it with Solr being a common-theme. And with the focus being the newbies and on-boarding experience. And, it turned out that there is lots of opportunities. I now run a Solr resource website ( http://www.solr-start.com ) which is quite appreciate…

I had a problem with full text search once. I used Solr and now I have an XML config problem.

You mean your users had a problem with full text search? So you solved that problem for multiple people at the expense of you having to deal with a bunch of XML files. Sounds like a win to me. After all, 2 small XML files is not THAT big a price to pay: https://github.com/arafalov/simplest-solr-config/tree/master...

Re: An Experience in Contributing to Open Source

#25

Post by arafalov » Wed, Dec 24, 2014, 9:29 PM UTC

ndesaulniers wrote: post #23

arafalov wrote: post #17

I decided a couple of years ago that my O/S focus would be Apache Solr. But I did not start by jumping into the source and trying to fix it. I started writing projects around it with Solr being a common-theme. And with the focus being the newbies and on-boarding experience. And, it turned out that there is lots of opportunities. I now run a Solr resource website ( http://www.solr-start.com ) which is quite appreciate…

I think the FCC could use your help [0]. "it appears that nearly 680,000 of the comments were not transferred successfully from ECFS to the XML files. This is due to a technical error involving Apache Solr, an open source tool the FCC used to produce the XML files" [0] http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/FCC-States-It-Misplaced-A...

Amazing. The XML files ARE the XML output directly from a Solr query (query included). And looking at it I would say they either had an issue with duplicate IDs or they did not expect any particular query to have more than 100000 results. They could have also optimized the system a bit better, as they are storing applicant and applicant_sort both, where applicant_sort could have been an index-only flag.

Yep, they could do with my help. Or with the help of solr-users mailing list which is incredible useful and has people with a lot more expertise than myself.