The NetBSD Hackathon

The what?

The NetBSD Hackathon is an open event held by NetBSD for users, developers, and the occasional bystanders to cooperate in improving NetBSD. The focus changes for each hackathon, ranging from bugfixing over release preparation to pkgsrc and documentation.

The focus and exact details are part of the hackathon's announcement.

Where?

Get on IRC, irc.freenode.net and join #NetBSD-code.

Take a few moments to have a look around, plenty of people will be there to help you with any query you may have.

When?

The next hackathon will be held October 10th through October 12th, 2008, coinciding with NYCBSDCon and the NetBSD developer's summit preceding that conference. The focus will be on tackling critical and high priority bugs in preparation for the NetBSD 5.0 release. Participation is open to everyone.

For more information about it please visit the wiki page.

Past events:

May 24-25 2008 (preparation for NetBSD 5.0)
Jan 19-20, 2008 (closing PRs that are not relevant after NetBSD 4.0)
Nov 3-4, 2007 (pkgsrc and its options framework)
May 21-23, 2007 (preparing the upcoming NetBSD 4.0 release, sysinst and documentation improvements)
May 2, 2007 (OEA PowerPC cleanup)
April 6-8, 2007 (the documentation Hackathon: Docathon!)
December 27-29, 2006 (the first pkgsrc Hackathon!)
November 25-26, 2006 (around 200 PRs analyzed and/or closed; install documentation fixed)
October 7-8, 2006 (over 310 PRs closed)
September 23-24, 2006 (over 270 PRs closed)

How?

You can view the PR database summaries and look for PRs you can handle.

There are many of them divided to many categories; most are bin, install, kern, lib, or misc bugs.

Got your mind on a specific PR? know what you're looking for? try the PR query form for some interesting search capabilities (hint: regex! :).

Here are some ideas on how to find PRs you can handle:

PRs that have already been fixed but not closed, where you can see the CVS commit in the PR body.
PRs that no longer apply: there's a good chance that many of the PRs filed against NetBSD 2 and lower no longer apply... but it's still worth checking. Ask!
PRs with a fix in the report: these are easier to handle.
PRs for which you can come up with a fix yourself!

Got a fix? want to close a PR? need some advice? or maybe just find out if anyone can test if it still applies? just ask in the channel and we'll close it for you or help in whatever way we can.

What else?

You may find use of an online paste-bin to share patches and such with other people.

The online NetBSD CVS repository can also be useful for quick code references.

The NetBSD Wiki can be used for maintaining lists of what needs doing and what is done.

The NetBSD Cross Reference, Nxr, can be used to quickly browse the source code online.