Re: Octconf code sprint

[Carnë Draug]

On 2 September 2014 16:26, Rik <address@hidden> wrote:
> On 2 September 2014 06:09, Carnë Draug <address@hidden> wrote:
>> On 27 August 2014 17:47, Rik <address@hidden> wrote:
>>> Not everyone can attend Octconf 2014, but I think we should reach out and
>>> have a bit of a virtual conference to share the camaraderie.
>>>
>>> I propose that we devote the Sunday afternoon session (9/21, starting 1
>>> p.m. EST) to a code sprint.  With a fixed time, and announcements on the
>>> mailing lists, I think we can get a fair number of people to join us on
>>> IRC.  My reasoning for the time is that a weekend day will be better for
>>> those with regular employment and that 1 p.m. EST can accommodate both
>>> coders on the West coast of N. America (10 a.m. local) and Western Europe
>>> (7 p.m. local).  Saturday has a microbrew tour of Montreal so I don't want
>>> to have a session then that might go late.
>
>> Will you announce this on the help mailing list? I can do it on Octave
>> pages of Facebook and G+. These days, we'll probably need to add a
>> link about how to set up IRC as well and join #octave.
>
> Yes, I was going to announce it on the maintainers and help lists.  Probably 
> 3 times since repetition is key.  What link do you suggest for an intro to 
> IRC?

Probably something we write ourselves [1]. In there we could link to
outside pages with configuration for a handful of IRC clients. And we
can pick the IRC things that make sense to us, kinda like if we had a
page for mailing list, we would explain bottom posting.

> Also, do we have a theme for the code sprint?  Or do we want to follow the 
> unconference protocols and just decide on that Sunday?

If we gonna have a bunch of core devs together, and we want to have
new people to join us, the theme could be "low-hanging fruit". It
seems there's a bunch of new Matlab functions that would be simple to
implement, which I think is ideal to introduce people into Octave
development.  Older devs probably already know what they want to work
on and will only need us around for discussion. If so, the things we
should have at hand is a list of those new functions and instructions
to build from source.

Carnë

[1] http://wiki.octave.org/IRC