Re: [Opensync-users] One ticket per week?

[Chris C. <ran...@gm...>]

On Wed, 2009-04-22 at 06:08 -0400, Chris Frey wrote:
> I'm not a primary developer, just a bugfix committer and the Barry
> plugin maintainer, but some thoughts...

I'm not even one of those - just someone who thinks that an extensible,
open source sync suite is one of the most important things currently
missing from the world of free software.

> > Should I switch to Windows / Outlook / Nokia's sync suite?
> 
> This will likely get the job done the fastest for you.

But it will not move any of us closer to the above goal. I have used the
Nokia suite for my E90, and it's extremely poor, not to mention hugely
bloated. It's the usual story: it's written to work on one OS and to
sync with one vendor's software, and it doesn't even do that very well.

> > Should I learn to program and fix it myself?
> 
> If opensync is your favourite solution, this _will_ help... but honestly,
> if you've never programmed before, that estimated 2010 date of yours
> might not move much. :-)

But every little helps. I am not much of a programmer at all, but I've
recently re-learned a little after a 20-year gap. Everybody recommends
the original book "The C Programming Language" by Kernighan & Ritchie,
but I have to say that I found it too sparse for my learning style. I
bought "The C All-in-one Desk Reference For Dummies", and I've found it
really helpful. (There is plain old "C For Dummies" too, but that
doesn't have as much stuff in it.)

(I've just seen Dotan's latest response about going back to Windows - I
just want to say that you don't have to have a CS degree to be able to
contribute meaningfully to open source projects. I was inspired by
Bjoern's response, and I plan to have a look at some of the trivial
tickets as soon as I can.)

> When 0.40 is released, testing will be needed.  I don't know if you've
> built 0.3x from sources and tested, but 0.40 will be the prime time to
> do so, and you don't have to be a programmer for that.  You just need
> to be determined.  Don't wait for binary packages, and plan on hitting
> roadblocks that will take persistence to solve, and you'll be ok.
> 
> Fortunately, I suspect that you won't have to wait until 2010
> for version 0.40.

This is good too. Everyone who cannot contribute patches can and should
contribute test results and bug reports. 

Regards,

CC