wren ng thornton
[Bug trackers are an excellent source of tasks for active developers to use so things don't get lost, but they're awful for new developers. For someone just joining the project it's rarely clear how important a task is, how hard, or how far reaching its consequences (or whether someone's already working on it). Good trackers have fields to note these things, but the notes are engineered for active developers; the extent to which those notes are even used or accurate varies wildly from project to project. Hence, having a clear discussion about what things really are important and how much they interact with everything else is a great boon.]
Agreed. In short, shouldn't Darcs come up with sth like http://wiki.winehq.org/JanitorialProjects or http://janitor.kernelnewbies.org/ perhaps? And of course with some serious up-to-date documentation on the theory behind Darcs. AFAIK Ian Lynagh started working on one. I'd say: first be precise. Don't be afraid of abstract algebra, it's university material, quite some people actually understands it. And those can later explain the hard to grasp parts. But I never felt like diving into the bunch of hazy metaphors I found about the inner workings of Darcs, even though I was and still am interested. So I nevert felt qualified to touch anything important or assess the performance problems for example. -- Cheers, Feri.