Re: Contributing for the first time

[Stephen Hemminger <shemminger@vyatta.com>]

On Mon, 7 Nov 2011 15:17:38 +0200
Daniel Baluta <dbaluta@ixiacom.com> wrote:

> On Mon, Nov 7, 2011 at 3:05 PM, Greg Freemyer <greg.freemyer@gmail.com> wrote:
> > Alexandru Juncu <alex.juncu@rosedu.org> wrote:
> >
> >>Hello!
> >>
> >>I have been a linux user for many years, and mostly on the networking
> >>side. And I would like to start contributing somehow to the linux
> >>community (in some other way than just promoting it). I guess that  I
> >>should start small with something like man pages.
> >>
> >>And there is something that really has been bugging me for some time.
> >>I'm an iproute2 user and I teach linux courses and show people how to
> >>use it. On most questions from my students about new commands, I
> >>redirect them to the man pages and to the Examples section of that
> >>page. iproute2 doesn't have such examples and I always wish it did.
> >>
> >>Do you think that if I submit a patch to the man pages, adding some
> >>examples of how to use the ip command, will it get accepted? Because
> >>this sounds like a simple thing and it's hard to believe that someone
> >>else didn't try do to this before. What do you think?
> >>Alexandru Juncu
> 
> > I think it will be accepted, but few people like to work on the man pages.
> >
> > Since this is a userspace package you will need to figure out who the maintainer is and if there is a mailinglist they use to discuss/support the package.
> >
> > Then submit your patch there.
> 
> According to [1] maintainer for iproute2 is Stephen Hemminger (CC'ed) and I
> think patches should be sent to netdev mailing list ([2]).
> 
> thanks,
> Daniel.
> 
> [1] http://www.linuxfoundation.org/collaborate/workgroups/networking/iproute2
> [2] http://vger.kernel.org/vger-lists.html#netdev

It might also be worth it to break some of the large manual pages into
clearer sections.