[Freeswitch-users] FreeBSD/OpenBSD

[Claus Andersen]

On Sat, 22 Feb 2014, Brian West wrote:

> FreeSWITCHers,
> 	Mike Jerris spent a little time to get FreeBSD 10 and OpenBSD 5.4 working in the build system, I have NetBSD somewhat working? Mike will be looking at that sometime soon.

Great work! This is extremely good news for me!

> Anyone wishing to Adopt an OS, please let me know, This requires you to build the OS fairly regularly and feedback bugs and/or patches back to help keep these platforms building.

Our primary platform at work is FreeBSD. I would be happy to help in any 
way I can. As always time and knowledge is limited but until someone 
better steps up I will be happy to at least try. I am willing to dedicate 
a number of work hours for this specific task.
This could include creating a package for easily inclusion on FreeBSD and 
keep that maintained. I do not know what you guys are doing on the other 
platforms but some sort of auto build system which automatically logs 
errors might be viable too.

> I would also be open to building a complete OS/Distro supported/status matrix, If anyone wishes to discuss this please let me know,  Travis Cross and I have been talking about the possibility of doing more bug hunt calls weekly and do so in varying hours to give everyone around the globe a better chance to attend.

I think a matrix would be a very nice addition for newcomers. The first 
question always asked is what is the best supported platform. I think that 
a 3 tier model would be helpful:
Tier 1: "Officially" supported and backed by CI.
Tier 2: Actively maintained but not yet with CI support. Lags a little 
behind but only slightly.
Tier 3: User supplied ports. May og may not be actively maintained.

If it is clearly described how we do the CI then there is a clear path on 
how to move from tier 1 to tier 3.

As for the bug hunt calls this falls (to me) back to a more general 
problem with the Freeswitch project: How can people with limited time and 
experience help out.
Example: I am willing to dedicate a fixed (but still limited) amount of 
time to the project but I am no guru. It takes a long time to gather the 
experience to spot where help is needed and can easily be supplied. I 
think something like a wiki page with a list of roles/tasks which needs to 
be handled regulary could be listed. In the same table you could then have 
a description of skill levels.
The typical open ended "please support the project and help us improve the 
wiki" is a high entry bar for newcomers. If we spend a little time getting 
much more specific I think it would be easier to get more people to 
volunteer if the see that the effort can be rather low.
And along those lines: This mail list has become rather high volume. Maybe 
create a list for wiki editors. If you are inexperienced but still would 
like to make corrections to the wiki you could ask for editorial 
review/TQA on this list.

> I want to stress you do not have to be a coder to attend these bug hunt meetings, you can interact and help update documentation on the wiki while we work on fixing issues we aren?t shy and will answer any and all questions to help make our docs more complete.

> Thoughts?

The above is a little open ended. So if you (we) on the wiki on the 
roles/tasks list wrote what exactly is needed for these bug hunt meetings 
I think recruiting would become easier.

Kind Regards,
Claus Andersen