Contributing

So you want to get involved in the development of Distrø but don’t know from where to start?

Well, there are some places that need some love, with time they’ll change, but for now it’s just at the beginning, so just keep reading.

Communication

The main form of communication is on IRC

IRC

The main IRC channel is #distro on irc.freenode.net.

Github

All the coding happens on github, open an issue if you find anything, you won’t get biten :)

Documentation

One of the main needs right now is documentation, sure sounds weird working on documentation when you don’t even know from where to start, but fear not! Just come hang out on IRC.

To contribute to the documentation you should fork this, make your changes and open a pull request, then the changes can be reviewed and most probably merged.

Writing

If you want you can start understanding how to use packo and write some documentation about it, or howtos or whatever, just open an issue or come into IRC

Translating

Translations are needed, to do it simply copy the en/docs directory to <yourlanguage>/docs and start translating the contents, remember to keep the file names the same or stuff will go deeply wrong.

Ideas

You’ve got some ideas that you’d like to see in a distribution but other distros are too busy with other stuff to care about you? Well, we’re looking for good ideas and improvements to the computer life, come to IRC and propose what you have, we’ll be glad to listen, and maybe make it real.

Coding

If you’ve got some coding knowledge (writing ebuilds/PKGBUILD counts as coding knowledge ;) you can be of huge help. All the stuff of Distrø is Ruby driven, because Ruby is ♥.

Rbuild writing

Being a young project with a new package manager this means tons of packages are missing, it’s really easy to write rbuils, so head to the quickstart and start writing rbuilds for your favourite packages. As usual coordination on IRC or through issues is advised (and wanted).

To easily contribute rbuilds you should fork this repository on github and work on the multiverse branch.

When you start working on an rbuild open an issue on that repository so everyone knows what rbuilds are being worked on and in what state they are.

When you have done your rbuild, digested it (packo-build digest file.rbuild) (every version has to be digested) send a pull request, it will be merged as soon as possible and checked by a trusted user.

When an rbuild is checked and made sure it’s working and not dangerous it will be moved in the universe branch.

To become a trusted user just write enough rbuilds, contribute enough and be present on IRC, if you aren’t a dick you will become trusted :)

Package manager writing

If you think the package manager misses a feature or a module head to the packø development page and come to IRC to start contributing to the package manager.