Starting with Pharo Issue Tracker

On Wed, Mar 25, 2015 at 2:33 AM, Peter Uhnák <[hidden email]> wrote:

http://pharo.org/contribute-propose-fix

Thats great Jigyasa.  Always good to have more contributors.  Now for those of us who have been doing it a while, it is not always obvious where there are gaps to get new people started off.  So please ask plenty of question if you get stuck.

Is your question that you don't have a particular bug to work on and would like a suggestion? 

* Check that reported bugs include have suitable steps-to-reproduce. If not, then ask the submitter for more details and report on the issue if you are able to reproduce it.

* Start by reviewing other people fixes.  Sometimes these are in deep places that are daunting at first, but I learnt an immense amount doing this when I started, and continue to do so.  Do the first step of merging in a SLICE from the Pharo4Inbox (soon to be Pharo5Inbox) but don't complete it - keep it as a reference.  Open the Inbox again and do the merge for real.  Then throw a few halts into the modified methods and try to reproduce the bug.  You learn Pharo best by watching it run, not just looking at code.

* In an image without the bug fix, put halts in the same methods, then single step both images in sync until you can observe differences - and that is where you learn the most.  

Tip: At the link above, where it says... "Take the latest stable or latest development system, ideally using the latest virtual machine (check the _downloads_)" - I'd suggest using PharoLauncher (http://www.smalltalkhub.com/#!/~Pharo/PharoLauncher) which makes it very easy to grab the latest build.

cheers -ben