[platform-dev] Occasional contributors and "complicated" rules

[Jonah Graham <jonah@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hello Platform devs,

I want to solicit some input and experience from you to apply to CDT.

CDT roughly follows the Eclipse Platform versioning rules. This leads to contributors who only occasionally contribute having more difficult time than I think they should have. This increases the perception that contributing to CDT is hard. (e.g. trivial fixes that pass all tests, still fails build)

How does the platform team deal with this? Do you require new contributors to learn all the rules such as incrementing service segments and require the contributor to fix it? Or does an experienced committer simply make a comment to educate and then the committer completes the housekeeping fix themselves? 

Up until now I have generally taken the approach of requiring the contributor to do this housekeeping, but it feels unwelcoming.

Thank you for any input on how you have handled this in the past, or if you have any official policy on this.

Jonah

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Jonah Graham
Kichwa Coders
www.kichwacoders.com