Notes from Ben's "contribute to ghc" discussion

[Ben Gamari]

Christopher Allen <cma at bitemyapp.com> writes:

>>I think the we'd want to restrict this to Diffs submitted by
>>contributors who already possess commit bits and specifically include
>>a "no-review" tag in the summary.
>
> Is this intended to address the issues new contributors have in
> contributing to GHC? This looks more insider stuff that misses the
> point if so.
>
To reiterate Joachim's point, this is a feature to try to make it easier
for contributors who would normally push directly `master` to instead
use Phabricator and hence go through CI.

The tree being broken is bad for everyone: users, new- and
regular-contributors alike. I think it's fair to say that this change
will improve everyone's experience, even if it's aimed at regular
contributors.

> If new contributors are not part of a conversation about contributing
> to GHC, when and where did that conversation happen and what is being
> done about it?
>
It is important to remember that the ideas that were described at the
head of this thread arose at a discussion at ICFP; I think it's fair to
say that there is significantly more GHC-hacking experience per head in
this group than average. Consequently, it's quite understandable if the
ideas discussed there may have focused more on regular contributors than
new contributors.

However, I would like to emphasize that this does /not/ mean that we
have no interest in hearing from beginning contributors. I would love to
hear from those who feel lost in the current scheme.

I spoke with a number of new contributors at ICFP who reported varying
degrees of success. I would love to hear more experiences!

Cheers,

- Ben
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