[Fuego] Report of hackfest (was RE: Possible hackfest in China)

Bird, Timothy Tim.Bird at sony.com
Thu Nov 16 23:53:59 UTC 2017


> -----Original Message-----
> From: Liu, Wenlong [mailto:liuwl.fnst at cn.fujitsu.com]
> Sent: Tuesday, November 14, 2017 10:13 PM
> To: Bird, Timothy <Tim.Bird at sony.com>; fuego at lists.linuxfoundation.org
> Subject: Report of hackfest (was RE: Possible hackfest in China)
> 
> Hi Tim and all friends,
> 
> Tim and I want to share this report to the mailing list and you all can take a
> look at this.
> Attached is report for that event.(Hopefully the attachment won't be too big
> for the maillist)

Liu and Bao - thanks very much for representing the Fuego project at this event.
I think we learned some things that will help us in the future.

I copied some of the feedback and thoughts from the slides onto the
hackfest wiki page: http://fuegotest.org/wiki/HACKxFDU_2017_planning

I'd like to copy some bullet points in this message and discuss some of them on
the mailing list:

> Specific feedback:
> * Fuego wiki is very useful, but it's not humanized enough for new users. Sometimes, it's
> hard to find a link that has just been closed if you not familiar with the Fuego wiki structure.
OK - wiki's are usually created ad hoc, and so they are notorious for having poor organization.
It sounds like the Fuego wiki is no exception.  I tried to get some funding to rework
the documentation, but failed at my last Linux Foundation meeting.  I had hoped that the
wiki material would be sufficient, but the wiki has too much random developer information,
and not enough structure for beginners (e.g. it has no documentation table of contents).

I think we need to convert our documentation over to reStructuredText, and organize
it better (especially for users - not developers).  This has been on my to-do list for a
while (see http://fuegotest.org/wiki/Issue_0046).  But I think I will make this a higher
priority.

>  * Students helped find a bug related to "PER_JOB_BUILD", but were too shy to send mail.
That's good they helped find a bug, but unfortunate they didn't want to send e-mail.
More on this below.

>  * Wiki page is not very suitable for beginners.
>  * Not familiar with Bitbucket like Github.
Just to clarify - are they familiar with Github, but not with bitbucket?
Or were they unfamiliar with both?

If I had the choice, I would prefer using github as well.  The reason we
do not is that github does not accept large binary files (like the test tarballs
we have).

One idea to fix this would be to put the source tarballs somewhere else.
They aren't easily managed under source code control anyway.  But
this creates a third place where materials need to be stored and managed,
which is undesirable.

>  * (Most of them familiar with GitHub and wonder why a project has 2 repositories)
I think the 2 repositories is a stumbling block as well.  I believe the rationale
for this is that users can keep their customizations (e.g. board files) under source
code control in the fuego repository, and upgrade the Fuego core separately.
The decision to have 2 repositories might be something we should revisit, as it
would be really nice from a development and release standpoint to only have
a single repository.

> Thoughts from Fujitsu mentors:
> * First of all, this is a competition event, not a technical exchange.
> * Then, The purpose of the students participating and the items they want are very clear
> (AI/VR/Block chain/etc)and there are few sponsors who can only provide hardware.
>  * Students have interest in Fuego and the other Open Source Community.
This is good.

> * Many students even know a lot of community related knowledge, but they are a user
> or learner, not a contributor in their mind. This change of mind is difficult, but valuable.
I had hoped that involving them at the hackfest, with a mentor physically present to assist
them, would get them over this first hurdle.  It is difficult sending the first e-mail
to a project, but once you get over the initial fear it's easier to do.

I think a lot of beginning developers underestimate the value they bring to a project.
People who are using a project for the very first time stumble over things that
experienced people do not.  They are in a unique position to report usability problems,
that are often very difficult for the core developers to notice.  Sometimes, we cannot
address their stumbling blocks, but it is often useful to at least hear about their
problems, so we can start to think about them.

> * Fuego wiki should be improved(It's not easy for new guys).
Agreed.

> * There are many college students in China. For those graduate students with embedded
> majors, it is no chance for them to know Fuego and even don't know the existence of
> Fuego when they are doing works in the laboratory. Those guys should be the focus for us.
Agreed.  We need to continue outreach efforts.

> * Yes, Fuego needs contributors, but more importantly, it requires users to use, to find
> problems, to report problems.
I completely agree with this.  We need to make sure that users can solve real
problems with Fuego.  It is critical to increase the user base, and after that some 
fraction of users will report problems, and some smaller fraction will actually
become Fuego developers.

>We hand out flyers and business cards, hoping that
> students would be able to join in.
Thanks.
 -- Tim


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