First Bug for Inexperienced Developer

[Alex Stephen]

Hello everyone,

Huge fan of Chrome and I'm looking to try to help out on the project. I'm in college and have taken a Data Structures class with some Algorithms experience.  I'm looking through the GoodFirstBugs list and I don't really know how to judge the difficulty of the open bugs. Does anybody see any that you feel would be particularly good for someone in my position?

[Peter Kasting]

On Thu, Jan 3, 2013 at 6:57 PM, Alex Stephen <aste...@gmail.com> wrote:

Huge fan of Chrome and I'm looking to try to help out on the project. I'm in college and have taken a Data Structures class with some Algorithms experience.  I'm looking through the GoodFirstBugs list and I don't really know how to judge the difficulty of the open bugs. Does anybody see any that you feel would be particularly good for someone in my position?

Have you ever worked with a large project?  A significant hurdle is just the "get everything checked out and building and figure out how to make any change at all" stage.

For a first bug you want something that's small.  The "GoodFirstBug" list, sadly, contains lots of things that are probably not good first bugs.  Another possibility is to look through the "polish" bugs as these are often small tweaks.  The next stage is to find an appropriate developer for the area in question and verify that we really do want the bug fixed; this person is also someone who will hopefully be able to help guide you to the right parts of the code, and review your change once you reach that point.

Personally, I'd try starting with a bug that particularly irritates you that you've always wanted to fix, or at least an area of the project that you find particularly interesting.  This sort of motivation will make it easier to slog through the initial process of finding your way.

PK

[Matt Giuca]

On 4 January 2013 15:34, Peter Kasting <pkas...@chromium.org> wrote:

Have you ever worked with a large project?  A significant hurdle is just the "get everything checked out and building and figure out how to make any change at all" stage.

To elaborate on this point, assuming you haven't already done it: try to find a small thing to change that you will be able to notice when you recompile the program. Just to convince yourself, "Hey, I am running a version of Chrome that is a little bit different due to my actions." Not a change that will be helpful to other people, just something, like changing a string. For example, I found the part of the code where the chrome:flags descriptions were stored and changed some of the strings there.

[Alex Stephen]

Thanks a lot for the advice. I really appreciate it. 

[Alex Stephen]

Polish bugs sound like an excellent idea. I'm still trying to just get the build running so I can make some small adjustments. Thanks!

[Paweł Hajdan, Jr.]

If you're interested, porting to other platforms is a nice way to get more familiar with the build system and physical structure of the codebase. Examples would be BSDs, Solaris, etc.

From there you can go to more complex changes.

On Thu, Jan 3, 2013 at 6:57 PM, Alex Stephen <aste...@gmail.com> wrote:

Hello everyone,

Huge fan of Chrome and I'm looking to try to help out on the project. I'm in college and have taken a Data Structures class with some Algorithms experience.  I'm looking through the GoodFirstBugs list and I don't really know how to judge the difficulty of the open bugs. Does anybody see any that you feel would be particularly good for someone in my position?

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[Peter Kasting]

On Fri, Jan 4, 2013 at 10:06 AM, Paweł Hajdan, Jr. <phajd...@chromium.org> wrote:

If you're interested, porting to other platforms is a nice way to get more familiar with the build system and physical structure of the codebase. Examples would be BSDs, Solaris, etc.

To be honest, I wouldn't recommend this unless the developer in question is experienced in general (and in particular with OS-specific coding on the OS in question), just not experienced with Chromium itself.  For someone who's relatively newer to programming or doesn't have low-level OS familiarity, this can be a frustrating area to dive into.

PK