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Thursday, March 31, 2011

Allura Sprint-orials

So with our initial announcement at PyCon and the sprints afterwards, the newly open source SourceForge project hosting platform Allura has gotten a bit of attention. One thing we want to do at SourceForge is to be responsive and open to the community, to make Allura much more than a "throw it over the wall" open source project. To that end, we've been looking at holding a sprint-orial series.

So what exactly is a "sprint-orial"? It's kind of like a sprint and a tutorial combined. If you don't feel like you know enough to contribute to an Allura sprint, you're welcome to attend to get help setting up Allura or learning where to start hacking on it (the "tutorial" aspect). If you want to start contributing to the project immediately, it's a chance to get together with other contributors in a focused setting. We find that we get a lot more done and have a lot more fun when we're all in a room together (even if it's just an IRC channel). If you're somewhere in between, you're also welcome to come and learn or contribute as your desire and expertise direct you. If you attend , you'll have access to SourceForge developers for answers to questions, help installing, or direction in ways to contribute.

So that's what a sprint-orial is. What we don't know is when and where to do the sprinting. My first thought is that we could do monthly Saturday sprint/tutorials. I can personally commit to this level of involvement. I live north of Atlanta and would be happy to host the sprinting, but I'm also willing to travel within reason, and SourceForge has tentatively (and quite generously) offered to foot the bill for my travel. So if there are groups of Allura hackers who would like a visit, we can schedule one or more of the sprints for your neck of the woods.

So what happens if the sprint isn't in your neck of the woods? Well, the good news is that you can still join us in IRC in #allura on FreeNode during the sprint (or most other times as well, we usually have quite a few SF.net engineers hanging around in there on weekdays).

So what do you think? Anyone out there interested in a sprint-orial? Please let me know in the comments, or on twitter at @rick446. Thanks!

4 comments:

  1. I'm interested! In north FL, so I could make it up your way occasionally. Would be a great way to get newcomers up-to-speed quickly. Nothing beats face-to-face interaction.

    Incidentally, I set up an Allura VM and development environment according to the README last night, and it went off pretty much without a hitch. Great job on documenting the setup process. The only snag was that Solr version is now 1.4.1, and 1.4.0 is no longer available for download at the link in the README.

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  2. Thanks, Tim! Remind me where you are in North Florida? Also, do you think that anyone else in your area would be interested in participating?

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  3. I'm in Gainesville - about 5 hours from ATL. I don't know a ton of Python devs around here but I know a few and can ask around about interest.

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  4. I am interested in attending at well, depending on the days. I also live in Gainesville. Tim is the one who told me about the Sprintorial idea you had and I think it is fantastic.

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