Re: Wanting to be involved in lilypond project again

[Janek Warchoł]

Hi,

2013/4/12 Fan Ziye <address@hidden>:
> Thank you very much!
>
> Now I am reading the link in your reply, but I'm a little confused --
> I don't know how the issue system and code review system run.
> I'm reading related parts in CG again.

The CG, albeit useful, may contain some inaccuracies, so don't ever
hesitate to ask if something's unclear.  Of course, it usually helps
in getting quick answers if you ask as specific questions as possible.

As for the issue-and-review system, here's a brief explanation:

We track all lilypond bugs, todos, feature requests etc. in google
project tracker: http://code.google.com/p/lilypond/issues/list.  All
discussion about the things already entered as issues should happen in
comments there.

When we want to discuss actual code changes, we need a tool where we
can easily view proposed changes and comment on them - for that we use
the Rietveld code review tool: http://codereview.appspot.com/.  So,
when someone has written a patch, he should upload it to Rietveld
(thus creating a new /rietveld issue/).

Since a proposed patch is a todo (i.e. somebody should do something
about it - review/discuss/accept/reject it), it should always be
mentioned in the google tracker, or there's a high risk of it being
forgotten.  If the patch addresses an issue that was already in the
tracker, it should be mentioned in that issue (the "Patch" field
should be set accordingly, usually to "Patch-new"); if the patch
doesn't address any previous issue, a new issue should be created just
to keep track of the patch.  To ensure everything is done correctly,
you should use git-cl as discussed here:
http://www.lilypond.org/doc/v2.17/Documentation/contributor/commits-and-patches#uploading-a-patch-for-review

I hope that this helps you.  If it does, we would really appreciate if
you could turn this into a patch for the CG itself, to make things
easier for future contributors.  (the problem we're having with CG is
that all experienced devs already know their way around all this
stuff, and so we usually don't realize what's missing - for example,
i'm a contributor since 2 years ago and i've already forgotten what
was confusing for me when i started.  Thus, we would greatly
appreciate the help of any new contributor, who knows precisely what
he has problems with).

By the way, do you have a github account?  How familiar with git you are?

> Besides, there is a problem when I try to build lilypond,
>         1. texinfo-5 causes a build failure of lilypond, texinfo-4.13 is okay.

I'm not very familiar with our build system; maybe this is a known
limitation, but if there's nothing about it in CG, please report it to
bug-lilypond (possibly with logs of the failed build), see
http://www.lilypond.org/bug-reports.html.  Any discussion should
follow there.

>         2. When building documentation, it reports an error:
> Error in `gs': free(): invalid pointer: 0x0980e978, and then several memory 
> map.
> I tried to use ghostscript-8.60 but nothing changed. Is that a compatibility 
> issue with libc?

I think we build LilyPond with ghostscript 8.70; anyway, similarly to
the above please report to bug-lilypond.

best,
Janek