how to help? help me!

R. A. Rivas Diaz rivasdiaz@yahoo.com
Fri Dec 20 14:07:00 GMT 2002


Hello.

I'm following this list for a while. I've tried to collaborate with the
project, but whenever I start to read all the documentation about this
project, soon I get lost (GCC, GCJ, Classpath, etc...).

I'll try to give you an idea of my posibilities.
- I have enought experience in java to colavorate with the development
of libjava or other related project
- I WANT TO HELP!
- My employer company doesn't allow me to use my job time to work on
other projects.
- My job leave me little free time to spend on non "job related"
projects
- Understanding of all the tools required to develop and use gnu or
other free tools/projects is a complicated and time consuming task.
(make, configure, M4, cvs, etc, etc, etc....)

I think my position is very common today, and a lot of people can't
help 'cause is too complicated to start into de project.
So my suggestion is that the project should maintain a list of isolated
tasks that someone like me can take and solve in a weekend, or 4-5
days; and give the solution to the project. What I mean is: I go to the
that "pendant-tasks-list", mark that I'm working on a task, analyze the
problem, solve it using the tools that I know how to use and which I
know I'm productive, check it with gcj, and finally contribute my code
to the project.
Why this? 'cause now I don't want to know (at least now) how to compile
or update my copy of gcc, I just don't want to spend more time trying
to understand all steps required to patch a bunch of sources, or
similar tasks... I'ts too much and too complex for GNU newbies! Maybe
I'm too lazy or too ignorant, but I preffer to use my prefferred IDE in
which I feel confortable (fortunately or not, I'm too accustomed to the
IDEs, and Eclipse is so useful on Linux and Windows (-:).
In my case I have enough experience in java and win32, some in c++, and
a little in linux. 
Some of this tasks can be testing or developing test cases, help in
some modules (for example, developping a javax.comm compatible module
for gcj, something mentioned recently), or even working on the doc or
the developing of the site (hopefully not much of web! (-:)
I think that GCJ should have also a page to guide begginners undertand
all things relative to GCC, Classpath, and simple steps on what to do
to help the project. Today, it's complicated for people to give a hand
on this project. There is too much new!

This are just my thoughts of how I can help this project.

Hope you can give me some answers....

Rivas.

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