[cdt-dev] Mentoring new contributors

[Nathan Ridge <zeratul976@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi,

As you're aware, CDT has a fairly large backlog of unfixed bugs and unimplemented feature requests.

As an IDE, our users are themselves programmers, and therefore likely have the programming skills necessary to fix many of these bugs. As an open-source project, "fixing bugs yourself" is not only possible but encouraged.

The remaining factor that I believe holds back many users from fixing bugs they care about, is lack of familiarity with the codebase, and the high learning curve required to dig into it.

I wonder if we could help address this by offering to mentor / provide guidance to contributors wishing to fix bugs themselves.

Mozilla - another large open-source project - has a somewhat formalized system of mentorship, where experienced contributors can mark bugs as being mentored. Such a marking means:

  - That the bug is simple enough that, with some guidance from someone more experienced,
     someone new to the codebase should be able to fix it.

  - That the contributor marking the bug as such commits to walking a new contributor
     through the process of fixing the bug.

Logistically, such marking is done by adding "[mentor=<mentor name>]" to the Whiteboard field of the bug in bugzilla, along with any other relevant tags, such as "[good first bug]" in the case of a bug which is particularly simple and thus suited as the first bug for a new contributor to work on.

What do you think about adopting a similar system? I can think of several bugs which would be suitable for mentorship, and which I would be willing to mentor, under such a system.

Regards,
Nate