2016-09-01 Developers Forum
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How to help onboard volunteer developers
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Minutes
2016-09-01 Developers Forum
Attendees
Burke Mamlin
Jamie Thomas
Daniel Kayiwa
Willa Mhawila
Ada Yeung
Srimaurya Kummamuru
Agenda
How to help volunteer developers with their contributions & make them more effective? w/ Daniel Kayiwa
Onboarding, Bottlenecks & challenges (code review/PRs, startup time, module version hell, documentation, ...)
Notes
"Attracting new talent boosts an open source community. So, this is a key issue for the community." -Daniel
Burkes thoughts
issues someone new in the community :
people reaching out to get dev environment set up and where can we help
Challenges with setting up dev environment (Takes too much time to get the dev environment ready?)
How much is SDK helping?
Encouraging new developers to use SDK?
Monitor SDK usage and usefulness.
How can openmrs community be more effective in accepting people?
Converting volunteers to contributors? (What does this mean?)
documentation need updated
developers guide
wiki
Embedding the doc in the application itself? (Like a README file?)
Especially a simple tutorial
as community have worked our way into having a shared platform but module development is happening in implementations so the ref app UI is not consistent and it creates a struggle for new volunteers
Different paths of development can be a challenge to new people
OWA
Javascript apps with REST API
Reference Application
There should be a way to direct new developers on the best approach to take depending on what they are contributing on. (This can help reduce the bar to get someone production in a short time)
Think it would be beneficial to create short informative videos to help new members get started
need to think about what it the process for keeping them up to date?
keep them short (ie. a few minutes)
Believe without good documentation then the videos will not be as effective
Find ways to provide training
Interact with volunteer to know what they are interested in and if their module aligns with volunteer's interest
Ask module authors to spend some time mentoring volunteers on their module
Continuously evaluate where developers get into trouble
We would benefit from being able to recognize the most common problems
Examples
People often have trouble finding the runtime properties file
Log the location of runtime properties.
TODO: create a mechanism to expose this in the app (e.g., in settings)
Where to install modules
MySQL version issues (e.g., problem with 5.7)
e.g., better document support versions of supporting software (tomcat, mysql, etc.)
verisoning and packaging of our applications needs refined
there are dependencies that need to be managed and do not think it needs to be so complicated
would like to "un-numb" developers - want them to look for items they do everyday that take maybe 5 min but would take much longer for new people so we can find solutions to these issues
Is it realistic to have someone watch JIRA tickets?
Transcripts
Audio recording of the call: Listen online or download (available after the meeting)