Bug Requests & Pull Reports

Getting people to contribute to open source can be hard. This talk looks at Powder, a simple Ruby gem, and some of the ways we tried to to turn bug reports into pull requests.

Transcript

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2. @rodreegez
   mintdigital.com/adam
   

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3. I <3 Open Source
   

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4. Bug Requests &
   Pull Reports
   A tale of open source
   

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5. Powder
   A Phil Nash & Adam Rogers gig (initially)
   

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9. Chapters
   1/. Dealing with people
   2/. Bug requests & pull reports
   3/. No issues, just pull requests
   4/. Documentation, front and centre
   5/. The moral of the story
   

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10. Chapter 1
    Dealing with people
    

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11. What belongs in
    the project?
    

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12. Is this a bug? Is it
    our bug?
    

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13. We just wrote a
    little Ruby Script!
    

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14. How do we deal
    with all this?
    

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15. Communication
    FTW!
    

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16. <3 GitHub
    Conversations
    around Pull
    Requests
    

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18. Reduced
    frustration, made
    intentions clear
    

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19. Chapter 2
    Bug Requests & Pull Reports
    

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20. Powder is dead
    simple
    

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21. A bug report is just
    a pull request
    without the code
    

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22. “Pull requests
    gladly accepted”
    

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23. Good introduction
    to open source
    

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24. Fork > Branch >
    Commit > Pull
    Request > Merge
    

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25. How can we
    encourage this?
    

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26. Ask the reporter
    how to fix
    

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27. Give ‘em a nudge
    

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28. Usually that’s all it
    takes
    

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29. Chapter 3
    No Issues, Just Pull Requests
    

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30. A bug report is
    almost worse than
    no report
    

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31. No Issues, Just Pull
    Requests
    

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33. Bold move
    

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34. So how did it go?
    

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35. We have a man
    page!
    $ gem install gem-man && gem man powder
    

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36. We also annoyed
    some folks
    

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37. “well I just found a
    couple of issues but i
    am a newb at ruby so
    I can’t help so I’ll just
    keep my mouth shut”
    http://logicalfriday.com/2011/11/04/powder-no-issues-policy/#comment-198
    

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38. But... some people
    were genuinely
    stranded
    

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39. Pro’s and Con’s
    

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40. Chapter 4
    Documentation, front and centre
    

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41. Readme Driven
    Development
    http://tom.preston-werner.com/2010/08/23/readme-driven-development.html
    

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43. Thor
    https://github.com/wycats/thor
    

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44. Thor encourages
    inline
    documentation
    

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47. Documentation ==
    less bugs!
    

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48. Chapter 5
    The moral of the story
    

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49. We still have a lot
    to learn with
    Powder
    

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50. Contribute to open
    source!
    

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51. Thanks!
    

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