Helping with Ruby, where to start?

[Rajinder Yadav]

How does one start to help the Ruby community? I figure the best way to
learn and build better Ruby skills is start by fixing bugs or help with
testing.

I keep telling myself I know Ruby =P I mean I've been coding in C++ for
over 10 years. Yet Ruby style is different, so it's not about learning
to program but learning more about Ruby that I would like to improve upon.

More to the point I would like to give back, while also making Ruby, my
tool of choice much better in the process.

So where can I start?

 

[Jeremy Bopp]

How does one start to help the Ruby community? I figure the best way to
learn and build better Ruby skills is start by fixing bugs or help with
testing.

I keep telling myself I know Ruby =P I mean I've been coding in C++ for
over 10 years. Yet Ruby style is different, so it's not about learning
to program but learning more about Ruby that I would like to improve upon.

More to the point I would like to give back, while also making Ruby, my
tool of choice much better in the process.

So where can I start?

I'm sure there are many ways to start helping, but for me I found a task
I needed to code, picked up a Ruby interpreter, and started working.
Along the way I published a couple gems, contributed to a third, and
filed a defect or two against some other gems and Ruby itself. Now that
I have a fair bit of experience, I also try to help out here by
answering questions when able. I can only hope that my contributions
have been helpful to others.

Take a look here if you want to start working on Ruby itself:

http://www.ruby-lang.org/en/community/ruby-core/

Creating and improving gems are also immensely helpful activities.

-Jeremy

 

[Jeremy Bopp]

I discovered the ruby-core website, instruction on there is lacking.
What does one do after they check out the code?

You should build the code and install the binaries so that you can start
using that version of Ruby.

If someone wants to start small and work their way up what is the
process? I would like to help with Ruby 2.0, with testing and improving
the doc, and eventually move on to fix bugs.

I don't know for certain what the official processes is, assuming there
is much of one at all. The best I can do is point back into the link I
sent earlier:

http://www.ruby-lang.org/en/community/ruby-core/#patching-ruby

That specific section details how to go about submitting patches and bug
reports. There are other links in that section containing information
on how to make a patch that will be considered.

If you just want to start fixing things, look for open issues in the
defect tracker and make patches to correct the issues you find. You'll
find documentation (or items that need documentation) along with the
code within the Ruby sources. If you find a defect that you don't know
how to fix yourself, open a new issue in the defect tracker and provide
all the details you can in order to describe the defect.

-Jeremy

 

[Rajinder Yadav]

You should build the code and install the binaries so that you can start
using that version of Ruby.


I don't know for certain what the official processes is, assuming there
is much of one at all. =A0The best I can do is point back into the link I
sent earlier:

http://www.ruby-lang.org/en/community/ruby-core/#patching-ruby

That specific section details how to go about submitting patches and bug
reports. =A0There are other links in that section containing information
on how to make a patch that will be considered.

If you just want to start fixing things, look for open issues in the
defect tracker and make patches to correct the issues you find. =A0You'll
find documentation (or items that need documentation) along with the
code within the Ruby sources. =A0If you find a defect that you don't know
how to fix yourself, open a new issue in the defect tracker and provide
all the details you can in order to describe the defect.

-Jeremy

Hi Jeremy,

thanks for your assistance. I got the source off the trunk and built
Ruby, I guess I'll start off by getting familiar with the source code
and layout of the project. I did a quick browse of the bug database
and have a better idea where to look.

I guess my first step is to read the README and compile a C module I
can call from Ruby to get use to the build tool. I don't have a Linux
background, but at home I use it exclusively from Ruby and Rails.

I'll push myself to find a easy bug to reproduce and fix just to get
use to the process of going through the motions.

--=20
Kind Regards,
Rajinder Yadav

 

[Chuck Remes]

Hi Jeremy,

thanks for your assistance. I got the source off the trunk and built
Ruby, I guess I'll start off by getting familiar with the source code
and layout of the project. I did a quick browse of the bug database
and have a better idea where to look.

I guess my first step is to read the README and compile a C module I
can call from Ruby to get use to the build tool. I don't have a Linux
background, but at home I use it exclusively from Ruby and Rails.

I'll push myself to find a easy bug to reproduce and fix just to get
use to the process of going through the motions.

There is no need to limit yourself to working *only* on MRI Ruby (MRI = Matz's Ruby Interpreter).

There are at least two other major Ruby runtimes that could use the time and talents of interested programmers. Plus, their code is a little more approachable than MRI's code base.

JRuby
http://github.com/jruby/jruby

Rubinius
http://github.com/evanphx/rubinius

JRuby is written primarily in Java but it has quite a bit of pure Ruby too.

Rubinius is written primarily in Ruby with a small C++ VM and a JIT using LLVM.

cr

 

[Jeremy Bopp]

thanks for your assistance. I got the source off the trunk and built
Ruby, I guess I'll start off by getting familiar with the source code
and layout of the project. I did a quick browse of the bug database
and have a better idea where to look.

No problem. This is how you get started with pretty much any open
source project.

I guess my first step is to read the README and compile a C module I
can call from Ruby to get use to the build tool. I don't have a Linux
background, but at home I use it exclusively from Ruby and Rails.

Compiling a C module is not a bad idea, but there should be great deal
to do within the Ruby interpreter itself. Since you say you don't have
a Linux background, is it safe to assume you primarily use Windows? If
so, you could help the RubyInstaller project:

http://www.rubyinstaller.org/

There is a big Contribute link on the upper right of that page with
great details for helping out the project that makes it easy to install
Ruby on Windows.

There are also defects in the Ruby interpreter that primarily affect
Windows builds, so you could focus on those as well.

I'll push myself to find a easy bug to reproduce and fix just to get
use to the process of going through the motions.

That's the best way. Find an itch and scratch it. ;-)

-Jeremy

 

[Charles Roper]

Since you say you don't have
a Linux background, is it safe to assume you primarily use Windows? =C2= =A0If
so, you could help the RubyInstaller project:

http://www.rubyinstaller.org/

Yeah, that's a good point - Luis has recently written a post
containing a plea for help:

http://blog.mmediasys.com/2010/09/23/rubyinstaller-what-where-when-1/

Charles

 

[Rajinder Yadav]

No problem. This is how you get started with pretty much any open
source project.


Compiling a C module is not a bad idea, but there should be great deal
to do within the Ruby interpreter itself. Since you say you don't have
a Linux background, is it safe to assume you primarily use Windows? If
so, you could help the RubyInstaller project:

http://www.rubyinstaller.org/

There is a big Contribute link on the upper right of that page with
great details for helping out the project that makes it easy to install
Ruby on Windows.

There are also defects in the Ruby interpreter that primarily affect
Windows builds, so you could focus on those as well.


That's the best way. Find an itch and scratch it. ;-)

-Jeremy

Yes I am a Windows developer, but at home I am exclusively using Linux,
started doing this a year ago just to get better with Linux and than I
discovered Ruby and Rails and I was hooked =)

So I'm more interested in helping out an open source project running on
Linux in the RoR community. I'm thinking I might find a gem project that
I find useful where I could lend a hand, a project that's not sexy and
in need of extra help or maintainers.

I guess my first step would be to write a simple "hello world" gem
plugin myself, understand the process. However I also just need to
develop a habit of doing something I don't know how to do, rather than
spending my time preparing!

 

[Rajinder Yadav]

There is no need to limit yourself to working *only* on MRI Ruby (MRI = Matz's Ruby Interpreter).

There are at least two other major Ruby runtimes that could use the time and talents of interested programmers. Plus, their code is a little more approachable than MRI's code base.

JRuby
http://github.com/jruby/jruby

Rubinius
http://github.com/evanphx/rubinius

JRuby is written primarily in Java but it has quite a bit of pure Ruby too.

Rubinius is written primarily in Ruby with a small C++ VM and a JIT using LLVM.

cr

The Rubinius project sounds like something interesting to work on, but
I'm not a fan of Java being a C++ guy =P

I'll take look at Rubinius.