On 06/09/2016 07:10 AM, Manvendra Bhangui wrote:
I have been using Fedora for ages right from the first release. I am
a C programmer since 1989. I know how to build RPM and Debian packages. I use the gnu
autoconf, automake, libtool to build most of my work. I use vi and I use combination of
RCS and git for version control. I am quite familiar with using many of the system calls.
I strive to write portable code that compiles on linux and OSX. All my laptops, my
mediacenter runs on Fedora and so I am familiar with Fedora for more than a decade. I want
to contribute one of my major work - indimail-mta (a replacement for sendmail/postfix).
indimail-mta has been built upon the original work by DJ Bernstein's qmail which was
released to public domain in 2007 AFAIK.
qmail as released by DJB is not FHS compliant. Also over the years, many have contributed
to the source code in form of patches. I have fixed these issues (minor IMHO) and I do
have RPMs released in public domain with the help of opensuse build service. Just recently
I have been fixing things to make qmail FHS compliant and I thought I could also start
working towards making a small contribution to fedora. But I am a newbie as far as the
wonderful behind-the-scene-packaging that happens on Fedora.
I have just created a fedora id and bugzilla id. Also I have been reading on how to
contribute. I have so far read the following
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Join_the_package_collection_maintainers
and
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Package_Review_Process
I find the information overwhelming and I am not sure if I am reading the right
documentation OR maybe it is my old dying grey cells. Any pointers on showing me the way
would help me and I will try my best to meet the expectations and quality guidelines of
the community. Also I am not sure if I can do this alone. So any help is welcome,
especially from someone who loves qmail.
Thank you in advance
Regards Manvendra
Hello, Manvendra, and welcome to Fedora! We're always happy to see new
faces. :)
Creating your Fedora account in FAS was the first step to beginning your
journey to contributing. A FAS account is the key to doing any form of
contributing in Fedora.
Packaging is a great way to get involved with the project and help make
an impact fairly quickly. There are some guidelines for getting started
with packaging as you listed, but I know they can probably come off
overwhelming a little bit.
A good first step might be to subscribe to the development mailing list
for Fedora and hang out in IRC channels on freenode relevant for
packaging and development in Fedora. For starters, check out this
mailing list and consider subscribing to it to connect to other
developers and packagers in Fedora.
https://lists.fedoraproject.org/admin/lists/devel.lists.fedoraproject.org/
Once subscribing to the mailing list, you should also consider hanging
out in some IRC channels for Fedora, like #fedora-devel. If you are not
that familiar with IRC, consider reading this handy guide on getting
started with it.
https://fedoramagazine.org/beginners-guide-irc/
I am not personally familiar with the packaging process for Fedora as
I'm not as heavily involved with that side of the project, but hopefully
someone else on this can help offer some pointers for how you can get
started contributing as a packager in Fedora. If you have any other
questions about contributing to Fedora, please let us know and we'd be
happy to help!
Again, welcome to the Fedora Project. :)
--
Cheers,
Justin W. Flory
jflory7(a)gmail.com