Looking to contribute

Hello,

I am currently taking organic chemistry while applying to master’s programs
in Computational Biology and Bioinformatics. In preparation for graduate
school, I have been looking for open source projects which I can contribute
to in order to get experience programming within the life sciences.
Avogadro seems like a good fit because it includes concepts and
functionality that overlap with what I am learning in organic chemistry. I
have not been employed as a software engineer for a few years and I am
hoping that I can also regain some of my programming abilities as a
contributor to this project.

Having a said all of that, I have compiled and installed Avogadro on Ubuntu
8.04 at home. I have played around with the application by following the
instructions in the documentation on the project website. I have not spent
a lot of time digging through the code, however.

My question at this point is where should I start? I know that in most open
source projects contributors can start being useful by submitting bug
fixes. Does anyone have any suggestions on a bug or other help that I can
provide to get started?

Looking forward to getting involved.

Best,
Darryl

Hi Darryl,

Welcome! Yes, it seems like your expertise and interests are a great match.

My question at this point is where should I start? I know that in most open source projects contributors can start being useful by submitting bug fixes. Does anyone have any suggestions on a bug or other help that I can provide to get started?

Well, we have an open bug tracker – there are several which look like “low-hanging fruit.”
http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=165310&atid=835077

There’s also a feature tracker:
http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=165310&atid=835080

And a general “to do” list as well:
http://avogadro.openmolecules.net/wiki/To_Do

Of course, please contact us on the list and we’d be happy to give pointers and suggestions.

Cheers,
-Geoff

Thanks, Geoff. I’ll start with the bug list and contact the list if I run
into any problems.

Darryl

On Thu, Nov 26, 2009 at 3:44 PM, Geoffrey Hutchison <
geoff.hutchison@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi Darryl,

Welcome! Yes, it seems like your expertise and interests are a great match.

My question at this point is where should I start? I know that in most
open source projects contributors can start being useful by submitting bug
fixes. Does anyone have any suggestions on a bug or other help that I can
provide to get started?

Well, we have an open bug tracker – there are several which look like
“low-hanging fruit.”
Avogadro / Old Bugs

There’s also a feature tracker:
Avogadro / Old Feature Requests

And a general “to do” list as well:
http://avogadro.openmolecules.net/wiki/To_Do

Of course, please contact us on the list and we’d be happy to give pointers
and suggestions.

Cheers,
-Geoff

Thanks, Geoff. I’ll start with the bug list and contact the list if I run
into any problems.

Hi Darryl,

Did you find any mini-projects which hit your interests? I can make a few
suggestions if you like.

Cheers,
-Geoff

Hi Geoff,

Due to finals preparation and finishing up grad school applications, I
haven’t been able to dig into the project to the extent that I want. I was
able to identify a couple of bugs that I thought would be good to start
with: #2894884 and #2894658.

However, if there are mini-projects that would be more beneficial to the
project for me to work on, I would definitely appreciate any suggestions.

Best,
Darryl

On Mon, Dec 7, 2009 at 10:25 PM, geoff.hutchison@gmail.com wrote:

Thanks, Geoff. I’ll start with the bug list and contact the list if I
run
into any problems.

Hi Darryl,

Did you find any mini-projects which hit your interests? I can make a few
suggestions if you like.

Cheers,
-Geoff