[Koha-devel] KohaCon11 hackfest: discussion

Paul Poulain paul.poulain at biblibre.com
Tue Mar 22 10:07:46 CET 2011


Hello everybody,

3 weeks ago we had our 1st IRC meeting about the next KohaCon in India.
It seems I've been selected to start the discussion about the Hackfest !

We've had 3 KohaCon already : one in France (2006) one in USA (2009),
one in NZ (2010).
In Marseille, it lasted one week and was mostly about hacking.
In USA it lasted 3 days, we had one day (and a half ?) teaching new
developers how to hack, then one day hacking
In NZ it lasted 3 days too. the 1st day was dedicated to some
-technical- lightning talks
(http://www.kohacon10.org.nz/2010/hackfest/index.html), then teaching
new hackers, then doing a few hacking

What should be the hackfest in India then ?
We have two goals during those meetings: welcome new developers, and do
some real hacking: it's very efficient to work in the same room and
without clock/time differences !

I proposed during the first IRC meeting to split the hackfest in 2
sub-parts, each of them dealing with one goal:
* Hackfest part 1 = "become a Koha developper"
* Hackfest part 2 = "do some hacking".
We could say part1 is about theory, and part2 is about practising what
we've learned on part1 ;-) (and of course, ppl coming for part1
would/should/could stay for part2 !)

The 1st part would be dedicated to teaching Koha to ppl wanting to know
how to join: things like using git, Koha source code organisation, Koha
database, working with templates, dealing with translations, submitting
patches. kmkale suggested to have 2 days for this part, just before
sunday (that would be a day-off)

The 2nd part would be dedicated to hacking: showing what is underway,
showing POC if applicable (Proof of Concept), playing with bugzilla,
writing unit tests,...

How long could/should it last ? There are 2 opinions here:
- staying & taking time is expensive, so not too long
- once you're here, we must make the trip worth, so as long as possible
What's your opinion on this matter ? Mine is that once we're here, we
must stay as long as possible, those meetings are precious.
So how long should this part last ? kmkale said there will be a room
available for us for as long as we want.
My proposition would be to say 3 days (mon-wed): not too short, we will
be able to do useful things, not too long, we'll be back home on
tuesday, before or for the next week-end, back to work next monday.

What's your opinion on those ideas ? anything to add ? Feel free to give
your opinion, nothing has been decided yet !

-- 
Paul POULAIN
http://www.biblibre.com
Expert en Logiciels Libres pour l'info-doc
Tel : (33) 4 91 81 35 08



More information about the Koha-devel mailing list