Re: Regarding Outreachy round 16

[Ricardo Wurmus]

Hi Aakanksha,

> I'm interested in working on the project "Improve the user experience
> for Guix package".

Thanks for your interest in Guix!

> I know C/C++ fair enough, I have experience working with GIT too.

Excellent!  Some familiarity with C++ will come in handy.  Most of Guix
is written in Guile Scheme, which is a language that can be learned very
quickly, but some parts that are relevant for this project are written
in C++.

> Can anyone tell me how do I begin contributing?

A good start is to create a simple Guix package.  In order to do that
you will have to install Guix first.  We have an installation script
that simplifies this process:

    https://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/guix.git/tree/etc/guix-install.sh

Once you have Guix installed and confirmed that you can build the
“hello” package without errors, I’d suggest getting and compiling the
Guix sources.  This is explained in the manual (which also includes a
couple of other hints):

    http://www.gnu.org/software/guix/manual/html_node/Contributing.html

Once you have the Guix sources you can start editing the files under
“gnu/packages”, which contain package definitions.

You can then create a new package definition for a package of your
choosing and submit it to the address@hidden mailing list as a git
formatted patch.

This may be a little overwhelming at first, but don’t worry about it.  I
strongly encourage you to ask questions on the #guix IRC channel on
irc.freenode.net.  People there are usually very helpful, and as there
are many regular contributors, they should be able to help you out.

Getting started is probably the hardest part (it was for me), so don’t
worry about asking too many questions :)

I hope this answers your questions.  If anything in this message should
be unclear or confusing feel free to just ask here or by sending me an
email off-list.

--
Ricardo

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