coffee.geek.nz

Here's the routine that helps me contribute to open source software - and it's all centred around breakfast.

Not so long ago I didn't have breakfast - stumbling outta bed, changed into whatever clothing smelled clean and dashing off to the office.

This has changed - now each morning, which eating breakfast I test something.

It might be a build from latest from dev branch on a project.

Or it might be an obscure combination of setups - like using lighttpd instead of apache, or sqlite instead of mysql.

Or it might be a bug somebody else reported on a project

Or it might be a curious error I found in a log file somewhere.

And while waiting for breakfast to settle (damn morning sickness!), I try and get a patch completed. The minimum is to narrow down the cause or provide more info on how to replicate something - and submit it to the project.

In the last month i've been testing laconica - and it's been lovely to find they've accepted my patch into dev branch before i've get off the bus at work.

And then there are hackfests. These usually centre around brunch.

I attend the OLPC hackfest every saturday. They meet at the Southern Cross. I do some OLPC work (usually trying out sugar on a stick), but most of the time I'm getting deeper into a trickier bug or feature request for some other project.