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Third NetBSD Hackathon Summary

Posted by kdawson on from the fun-in-the-channel dept.

jschauma writes, "The third NetBSD Hackathon was held on Saturday and Sunday, November 25th and 26th, 2006. NetBSD users and developers met on IRC to prepare NetBSD for the upcoming re-branching of NetBSD 4.0. Approximately thirty NetBSD developers and more than 140 NetBSD users joined in on the two days, paying particular attention to improving install documentation and ensuring build stability. A Wiki page as a TODO list was used for the first time, an approach that is likely to be used in future hackathons. All in all, over 200 bugs have been worked on in those two days and while not all of the critical showstoppers could be fixed, valuable progress was made in identifying root causes."

15 comments

  1. Nice to see Wiki software used by Alkivar · · Score: 4, Interesting

    It's really nice to see Wiki software used for it's original purpose, and used properly. Hopefully the NetBSD team continues to keep a wiki in mind during the next hackathon.

    1. Re:Nice to see Wiki software used by fotbr · · Score: 0, Troll

      If only this was a sign that the "a wiki is the solution to EVERYTHING" mentality is dying off.

      Mini-rant mode --

      Open Source pet-peeve: using a wiki for documentation. Expecting the users (the oh-so-often-spoken-of "community") to write your documentation for you is lazy. I know developers usually prefer not to deal with documentation. I understand the appeal of throwing something out there and having the users document it so you don't have to. But please, PLEASE, let the wiki-as-documentation phenomenon die. There's nothing more annoying than trying to find out how to do something and get a one sentence "this entry is a stub, you can add more!" comment. If I KNEW how to use that feature, I wouldn't be searching for it.

    2. Re:Nice to see Wiki software used by TCM · · Score: 2, Informative
      Open Source pet-peeve: using a wiki for documentation. Expecting the users (the oh-so-often-spoken-of "community") to write your documentation for you is lazy.
      I'm with you. There's nothing worse than projects who seem to have no design plan and just code ahead. Documentation is lacking and you have users guessing about the features. Most prominent example in my eyes is Asterisk.

      Fortunately, wikis were used for this event only. I can understand that they wanted to have a process that allows for fast changes when doing such events.

      Normally, NetBSD documentation is first class, be it man pages or documentation on their homepage. It's one of the few Open Source systems that properly documents everything. The whole NetBSD homepage is managed with CVS and written using DocBook I think. AFAIK they need to checkin to CVS and rebuild the relevant parts of their homepage with a "make" to change anything.

      So for an event that lasts 3 days and where people need a rapidly changing status overview, the usual documentation progress probably was too slow.
      --
      Of course it runs NetBSD. BTC: 1NT7QvbetmANwaMzhpVL6
    3. Re:Nice to see Wiki software used by nacturation · · Score: 1

      It's really nice to see Wiki software used for it's original purpose, and used properly.Unfortunately I can't edit your post to correct the typo.

      --
      Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
    4. Re:Nice to see Wiki software used by fotbr · · Score: 1

      No argument with how it was used in this case -- its a great example of when a wiki truely is a useful collaboration tool, and NetBSD does generally have good documentation.

    5. Re:Nice to see Wiki software used by fotbr · · Score: 1

      Yay, I'm a troll because I don't think a wiki is the magical solution to everything!

      It has its place. But it makes a piss-poor substitution for real documentation.

    6. Re:Nice to see Wiki software used by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I don't understand what is wrong with hi's original statement.

  2. Laugh at me if you must... by mythosaz · · Score: 0

    ...not noticing this was bsd.slashdot, instead of games.slashdot, I was tricked into clicking on the link by my hopes of hearing that someone recovered the Amulet of Yendor and taken it to the astral plane :(

    1. Re:Laugh at me if you must... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Sorry,
      YASS (Yet Another Stupid Summary).

  3. i wish i had the time by eneville · · Score: 2, Interesting

    i wish i had the time to actually contribute, or even read the netbsd kernel. it's got a lot of potential. sometimes i wonder how the linux kernel became more popular than the bsds. net/open do seem more stable in some ways.

    --
    Why UNIX?
  4. *BSD is D - E - A - D by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Deal with it, losers.