CVS Philosophy

[Kevin Buettner]

On Jul 31, 11:48pm, Craig White wrote:

> How fair is it install CVS version if you can't help develop the
> project? Is it also fair to ask for assistance on CVS stuff?

You can always help by doing one or more of the following:

 - write new code
 - fix existing code
 - build the code; report build problems
 - test the code; report problems where the code did not perform
   as expected
 - work on documentation

> I see people doing that in various projects - is it rude?

It's only rude if the questions you're asking are things that you
should've been able to figure out by reading the documentation
associated with the project.  For example, it would indeed be rude to
ask for assistance in configuring and building the project if there
were a file named ``README'' or ``INSTALL'' which clearly explains how
it should be done.  OTOH, it's not rude to ask a question if something
in one of these files is unclear, incorrect, or appears to be out of
date.  In fact, asking such questions is in fact helping the project
out because (hopefully) some of the documentation will improve as a
result.

Kevin