Communicating in Open Source

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COMMUNICATING IN OPEN SOURCE Saturday, April 21, 2012

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•Where to ask •What to ask •How to ask Saturday, April 21, 2012

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DO YOUR RESEARCH Saturday, April 21, 2012

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WORKFLOW • I have an issue. • Is it an issue with the project? • Check Google, StackOverﬂow, etc. • How do I communicate this to the project? Saturday, April 21, 2012

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READ THE FRIENDLY MANUAL • Projects have different preferred communication methods. • Your project’s workﬂow is the only one that matters. • First place to look is the documentation. Saturday, April 21, 2012

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MAILING LISTS / IRC Saturday, April 21, 2012

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WHERE TO ASK FOR HELP • Is there a -dev and -users mailing list/IRC channel? • Write in a professional tone. • The shorter, and more self contained the example, the better. • Patience is key. Saturday, April 21, 2012

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HOW TO ASK FOR HELP • A clear description of your goal, and what you tried. • Steps to reproduce the bug. • Example data if needed. • Your desired output, and the actual output. • Any relevant system info (compiler version, OS, etc.) Saturday, April 21, 2012

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ISSUE TRACKERS • Always search ﬁrst. • Make sure to categorize/tag things correctly. • All the steps on how to ask a good question apply to writing a good bug report. • Unit tests! Saturday, April 21, 2012

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•http://catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html •http://sscce.org/ Saturday, April 21, 2012

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QUESTIONS? Saturday, April 21, 2012