i want to become a linux/gentoo dev some day

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ratch3t.x · Post by **ratch3t.x** » Sat Jan 06, 2007 9:16 pm

i have always wanted to become a developer. where do i start? what languages should i learn? any information telling me what to learn helps, thanks

anello · Post by **anello** » Sat Jan 06, 2007 9:34 pm

learn as much as you can!!!

Languages: C and everything you else have interest in - OO language maybe - python since portage is written with it

Tools (very important): the common tools like cvs/svn and of course make & configure ...

related to gentoo: ebuilds and the classes and of course how the OS works

But a Gentoo Dev could obviously tell you more, but there are even Documentations for this available. Search the main page and the forums a bit I'm sure that you'll come across it.

Dralnu · Post by **Dralnu** » Sat Jan 06, 2007 10:22 pm

Python, C, bash.

Kind of depends on what kind of dev - if you want to do, say, baselayout, then you'd need to study more of that then, say, working with qt

Earthwings · Post by **Earthwings** » Sat Jan 06, 2007 10:34 pm

Moved from Portage & Programming to Gentoo Chat.

vibrokatana · Post by **vibrokatana** » Sun Jan 07, 2007 1:01 am

I would start with python or some other language that is syntax friendly.

Do some bash scripting (writing a recursive spider is fun and fairly easy, and you get to piss off your favorite media site).

Look at the ebuilds and understand how they work (notice that most pull the version number from the filename).

Take a random game and screw with its source code to watch it go haywire and goofy. <-- java games are pretty good for this, I had fun making a missle command game that launched 500 missles a second and ran at about 2fps.

Understand how libraries work and OO relationships. <-- I would say the sooner the better, but some people may develop sever migranes who havent worked with programming and unserstand the code.

You may want to try web development, it is fun and you can do some weird stuff to browsers with javascript (managed to crash windows explorer a few times, rofl). I got paid over the winter break to make a new frontend to a GIS application, it was fun using some fairly simple ajax to make a more functional system. (pics here, here and here) The nifty thing is a page refresh is not needed for any of that and no frames were used (God kills kittens every time a frame is displayed in a webpage!)

John5788 · Post by **John5788** » Sun Jan 07, 2007 4:47 am

learn some python if your interested in portage

bawigga · Post by **bawigga** » Sun Jan 07, 2007 5:26 am

Read up on as much as you can! Here's the Gentoo developer handbook, you'll find some interesting stuff in there.

http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/devrel/handbook/handbook.xml

runningwithscissors · Post by **runningwithscissors** » Sun Jan 07, 2007 6:00 am

Get cracking.
And fix ebuilds on bugzilla.

antarus · Post by **antarus** » Sun Jan 07, 2007 7:21 am

ratch3t.x wrote:i have always wanted to become a developer. where do i start? what languages should i learn? any information telling me what to learn helps, thanks

You need to be fluent in shell scripting, you need to know bash.
Bonus if you know autotools, and any other build systems.
You need to be familiar (able to read) almost any programming language, unless you are going to focus on a particular class of package (say java packages or something).
Did I mention you need to know bash?*

Also, devmanual.gentoo.org is a good reference for the layperson.

awk,sed,cut,tr,perl,sort,grep,wc, and more, you also need to know (minimally what each does and how to use it and when)

*(Hint, you need to know a LOT about bash)

steveL · Post by **steveL** » Sun Jan 07, 2007 7:41 am

wrt bash, this is quite handy. It's actually about portability in autotools, but you get to see a lot of idiosyncracies that you might come across, whose meaning isn't immediately obvious.

edit: more BASH docs:
Intro
Advanced

edit: excellent Wiki on BASH from greycat (who seems to run #bash)

Don't forget #bash on freenode!

edit: Bash Reference Manual which is ref'd in the BASH channel, for Parameter Expansion (Sec 3.5.3)

Dralnu · Post by **Dralnu** » Sun Jan 07, 2007 9:53 pm

antarus wrote:
ratch3t.x wrote:i have always wanted to become a developer. where do i start? what languages should i learn? any information telling me what to learn helps, thanks
You need to be fluent in shell scripting, you need to know bash.
Bonus if you know autotools, and any other build systems.
You need to be familiar (able to read) almost any programming language, unless you are going to focus on a particular class of package (say java packages or something).
Did I mention you need to know bash?*

Also, devmanual.gentoo.org is a good reference for the layperson.

awk,sed,cut,tr,perl,sort,grep,wc, and more, you also need to know (minimally what each does and how to use it and when)

*(Hint, you need to know a LOT about bash)

I think regular expressions might be handy, but I think that ties into sed/awk.

vibrokatana · Post by **vibrokatana** » Mon Jan 08, 2007 12:19 am

sed spoils you to hell and back, I vote it for the most useful program ever, lol.

Seriously what cant you do with sed? With a little thought and some sed you can do practically anything.

Dralnu · Post by **Dralnu** » Mon Jan 08, 2007 2:20 am

vibrokatana wrote:sed spoils you to hell and back, I vote it for the most useful program ever, lol.

Seriously what cant you do with sed? With a little thought and some sed you can do practically anything.

Sed + bash and you can do an awfully lot...

steveL · Post by **steveL** » Mon Jan 08, 2007 2:43 pm

Taken from a recent post on the dev m-l:

You know this question comes up a lot. The answer hasn't changed much
over the years, and you may not like it, but it's the honest to goodness
best way to start helping: just start helping. There are numerous
avenues to do so, and in no particular order they are:

1. gentoo-user mailing list
2. the gentoo forums
3. join an irc channel or two (#gentoo has a steady stream of traffic of
people who need help)
4. figure out what you're good at and/or what you want to learn and hop
on over to bugzilla and find bugs in those areas.

The caveat to the bugzilla one is this: most people who want to help go
straight to maintainer-wanted bugs or try and create ebuilds for new
packages. To be perfectly honest, those areas are not where gentoo
needs help. We need help to maintain stuff already in the tree, so start
at maintainer-needed or drill into some specific teams (gnome, pam,
kerberos, kde, bsd, samba, mail, web-apps, there's a list of herds
somewhere).

Spread the word!

vibrokatana · Post by **vibrokatana** » Mon Jan 08, 2007 3:56 pm

I would consider it good practice to do a few projects yourself before you stumble headlong grasping to figure out what is wrong. Sure finding bugs in ebuilds and fixing them may be relatively easy, but finding a programming issue can be tricky if you dont know how to read code.

eroyf · Post by **eroyf** » Mon Jan 08, 2007 4:03 pm

ratch3t.x wrote:i have always wanted to become a developer. where do i start? what languages should i learn? any information telling me what to learn helps, thanks

Show up at a Bugday. Bugday is one of the best ways to be seen by developers. Hang out in the IRC channel the first Saturday in the month and learn from others how to fix bugs. If you have any questions about it feel free to contact me on IRC (eroyf).

Gentoo is not only programmers. We have a big amount of staff like forum moderators and so on. The list is huge!

Earthwings · Post by **Earthwings** » Mon Jan 08, 2007 6:47 pm

Split off [topic=530291]syntax friendly vs. programmer friendly[/topic]

steveL · Post by **steveL** » Tue Jan 09, 2007 4:22 am

mailing list etiquette is useful to read before you start posting to gentoo-dev. (I've been told

)

MrVahn · Post by **MrVahn** » Sat Jan 13, 2007 4:18 pm

As my proffessor have said: Learn as many languages as you can. After the first five it gets easy.

Which is true. Languages are technically tools. They have their own strengths and weaknesses. Say, would you rather use a sword to chop lumber than an axe? Same with programming languages.

nanafunk · Post by **nanafunk** » Fri Jan 19, 2007 4:51 am

edit: excellent FAQ on BASH from greycat (who seems to run #bash)

root|vaio runs it, and wrote a large part of the wiki, as did greycat.

Seriously what cant you do with sed? With a little thought and some sed you can do practically anything.

Seriously you can't count with sed.

If you want to learn bash well, read scripts, write scripts, it's quite fun! Some links you should bookmark....

Bash
http://wooledge.org/mywiki/BashFaq
http://wooledge.org/mywiki/BashPitfalls

Sed
http://sed.sf.net/sedfaq.html
http://xrl.us/sedintro#uh-0
http://www.student.northpark.edu/pement ... line52.txt

Awk
http://www.student.northpark.edu/pement ... k1line.txt
http://www.gnu.org/software/gawk/manual/
http://hibernia.jakma.org/~paul/awk-faq.html

IRC
irc.freenode.net -- #bash #sed #awk

Most of those urls come from the /topic in the above channels, they're very helpful. If you ever need help drop by.

/nick goldfish

welp · Post by **welp** » Fri Jan 19, 2007 12:56 pm

You might want to think about becoming an AT (Arch Tester) for your chosen arch - I know that Gentoo/AMD64 and Gentoo/x86 are always looking for new ATs, and Gentoo/Alt (Gentoo/{FreeBSD,OpenBSD,etc}) currently seem to have... no ATs.

And, as the rest of 'em said, come along to Bugdays, post patches/bugfixes on bugzilla, and so on.

MrVahn · Post by **MrVahn** » Sat Mar 10, 2007 1:13 pm

I see. Arch testers seem to be the same as a beta tester in terms of games. Interesting, but how much time should one devote in becoming an arch tester?

Samoth · Post by **Samoth** » Sat Mar 10, 2007 4:04 pm

Yeah, great question, I am interested in being an AT for AMD64 but I don't have time every day. Sort of part time then. How much time does it take to be an AT?

Naib · Post by **Naib** » Sat Mar 10, 2007 4:35 pm

becoming a dev looks too hard
becoming a AT looks too restrictive (need to run ARCH not ~ARCH

)

Samoth · Post by **Samoth** » Sat Mar 10, 2007 4:58 pm

I don't run ~ARCH, but I do have a few ~amd64 packages unkeyworded(about 10).

Will this make a difference?

i want to become a linux/gentoo dev some day

i want to become a linux/gentoo dev some day

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