[gentoo-java] Greetings from a new volunteer

[gentoo-java] Greetings from a new volunteer

[Grant McDorman]

Greetings to all. I've volunteered to assist the Java team (following
the public plea in the Gentoo weekly news). I've already received a
note from Karl T., and have subscribed (obviously) to this list.

Let me introduce myself. I've been in the software development
business for a long time; I worked for what is now UNISYS in the
language products division, for a now-defunct Canadian airline
(Wardair), the Ontario public power utility, and am now working at
Cedara (a medical imaging company, http://www.cedara.com).

Relatively speaking, I'm a latecomer to Java - I started with APL, of
all things, and went through numerous other languages. I'm using Java
at work these days (we have a layer in our imaging toolkit that is in
Java - although, oddly, it is _not_ crossplatform - yet). I use
Netbeans as my IDE at work (or a plain vanilla text editor). All of
this is currently on Windows. (Yes, I know that's unusual - but that's
what our customer wanted, and money talks.)

I also am responsible for a couple of very small projects on
SourceForge - vncsnapshot (http://vncsnapshot.sf.net) and
xtaskmanager. The former gets a bit of attention; the latter, little
to none. Both are written in C (with a little C++ in vncsnapshot,
inherited from the VNC source code base).

I'm not very conversant with ebuilds, although I have written one or
two, and modified a few others (I only submitted one or two to the
Gentoo bugs, though).

At home, we have five machines - one is a server and firewall; the
remaining four machines are each for one of the family members. All
are running Gentoo; the personal machines are dual-booted with Windows
XP, but only to play games. (My wife, in fact, doesn't use Windows at
all.)

Personally, I'm older than I care to admit. I have been married for
twenty years, and have two children, both boys, who are now 15 and 17.

So, with respect to the Gentoo Java project: I've looked over the
documents and bug list. I note that most bugs are ebuild problems
rather than program bugs. What would you like me to start with?

Note: I can be contacted at this email address (grmcdorman@gmail.com),
or via Jabber (grmcdorman@myjabber.net). I do have a few other email
addresses, but anything sent to Gmail I will see in short order. I'm
not likely to be on the IRC channel, as I haven't had any reason to
use that in the past.
-- 
Grant McDorman
-- 
gentoo-java@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-java] Greetings from a new volunteer

[Joshua Nichols]

Hello, and welcome!

Grant McDorman wrote:
> Greetings to all. I've volunteered to assist the Java team (following
> the public plea in the Gentoo weekly news). I've already received a
> note from Karl T., and have subscribed (obviously) to this list.
>
> Let me introduce myself. I've been in the software development
> business for a long time; I worked for what is now UNISYS in the
> language products division, for a now-defunct Canadian airline
> (Wardair), the Ontario public power utility, and am now working at
> Cedara (a medical imaging company, http://www.cedara.com).
>
> Relatively speaking, I'm a latecomer to Java - I started with APL, of
> all things, and went through numerous other languages. I'm using Java
> at work these days (we have a layer in our imaging toolkit that is in
> Java - although, oddly, it is _not_ crossplatform - yet). I use
> Netbeans as my IDE at work (or a plain vanilla text editor). All of
> this is currently on Windows. (Yes, I know that's unusual - but that's
> what our customer wanted, and money talks.)
>
> I also am responsible for a couple of very small projects on
> SourceForge - vncsnapshot (http://vncsnapshot.sf.net) and
> xtaskmanager. The former gets a bit of attention; the latter, little
> to none. Both are written in C (with a little C++ in vncsnapshot,
> inherited from the VNC source code base).
>
> I'm not very conversant with ebuilds, although I have written one or
> two, and modified a few others (I only submitted one or two to the
> Gentoo bugs, though).
With regards to Java, our ebuild documentation is at:
http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/java/java-devel.xml

At the bottom, there are links to general developer documentation.
>
> At home, we have five machines - one is a server and firewall; the
> remaining four machines are each for one of the family members. All
> are running Gentoo; the personal machines are dual-booted with Windows
> XP, but only to play games. (My wife, in fact, doesn't use Windows at
> all.)
>
> Personally, I'm older than I care to admit. I have been married for
> twenty years, and have two children, both boys, who are now 15 and 17.
>
> So, with respect to the Gentoo Java project: I've looked over the
> documents and bug list. I note that most bugs are ebuild problems
> rather than program bugs. What would you like me to start with?
>
As far as what to work on, my mantra has always been to work on either
a) what interests you, b) what you need, or c) things that bother you.
Basically, find an itch and scratch it :)

> Note: I can be contacted at this email address (grmcdorman@gmail.com),
> or via Jabber (grmcdorman@myjabber.net). I do have a few other email
> addresses, but anything sent to Gmail I will see in short order. I'm
> not likely to be on the IRC channel, as I haven't had any reason to
> use that in the past.
If you plan to get very involved with the project, I recommend joining
the channel. Most of the team spends at least some time in the channel
(some more than others ;) ). I've found it to be the most expedient form
of communication for what we do. At the very least, I suggest joining
the channel when you are working on Java stuff or reading through our
documentation.

Regards,

-- 
Joshua Nichols
Gentoo/Java Project Lead
-- 
gentoo-java@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-java] Greetings from a new volunteer

[Wiktor Wandachowicz]

> If you plan to get very involved with the project, I recommend joining
> the channel. Most of the team spends at least some time in the channel
> (some more than others ;) ). I've found it to be the most expedient form
> of communication for what we do. At the very least, I suggest joining
> the channel when you are working on Java stuff or reading through our
> documentation.

He's right. And it's quite easy to do so. Just install irssi and you are set:

# emerge -av irssi
$ irssi -n YourNickHere -c irc.freenode.net
( wait for connection and then )
/join gentoo-java
( read / talk / etc )
/quit

That's the minimal amount of knowledge to get you going.

Hope that helps.
Wiktor

-- 
Registered Linux user #390131 (http://counter.li.org)
-- 
gentoo-java@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-java] Greetings from a new volunteer

[Grant McDorman]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 545 bytes --]

Actually, I already have Kopete set up; I sat in the channel for 20 minutes
or so on the weekend.

WRT to ebuilds, yes, I know of and have glanced at the documentation (both
the generic ebuild
docs and the specific Java ebuild docs). t's more that I don't have much
experience writing them.

I looked over the bug list; there isn't anything there that jumps out for
me. If anyone has a suggestion for a specific bug, or bugs, I should look at
I'll be glad to have; otherwise, I just grab some bug that appeals to me?

Thanks.
-- 
Grant McDorman

[-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 574 bytes --]