Contributing to Kaya development
You can help with Kaya development in many ways. Perhaps the most important way is simply by using the language and giving us your feedback, either by emailing us at [email protected] or by joining the development mailing list.
We’d like to hear about any ideas you have for future Kaya development, whether in language features or in additional libraries.
Reporting bugs
As with any large software project, Kaya inevitably contains some bugs. Unlike most software projects, however, bugs in a programming language compiler and standard library can have wide-reaching effects. If you find a bug in Kaya, please check that it’s still present in the latest released version (if you use an older version), and if it is, please tell us about it. A short piece of sample code that reproduces the bug will make things much easier for us, but don’t worry if you don’t have one.
A particularly serious class of bugs is Kaya failing to build entirely. If this happens to you, we’ll do our best to fix it. We’re limited by the hardware we have personally available, but if you send us any error messages at the point it fails, we might be able to track it down.
Finally, don’t worry if you’re not sure whether something is a bug or not – just email us and ask.
Contributing code to the Kaya project
To contribute code to Kaya, you will first need to download and build the development version of Kaya, and then use darcs record and darcs send to send your contributions to us. For documentation updates, you can either use this method, or if you prefer, just email your suggestions to us or the mailing list.
If you’re interested in helping, but not sure where to start, then an optional library such as Complex or Image is a relatively easy way to get used to the interface conventions.
Particular places in Kaya that need help at the moment are:
- Better documentation and extended tutorials. If you’ve been frustrated with a poor-quality function description, or have had trouble understanding a tutorial, please let us know and give us some ideas for improvement. Kaya 0.2.5 includes more detailed documentation than previous versions, but there is still room for improvement.
- More database libraries. Kaya currently supports MySQL, Postgres, and SQLite databases. If you’d like support for another database, please let us know or contribute an interface module.
- Better regression testing.Ideally, the regression tests should cover all of the compiler, standard library and run-time system. Please help us close up the gaps – we obviously want to catch regressions before a release, rather than having your program become the test.
- Icons and logos. If you’re feeling artistic, why not make a small graphic that can be used in Kaya web applications.
Of course, the most important place in Kaya is whatever you feel like working on – don’t let the suggestions above dissuade you from contributing however you like. The nature of a programming language is no matter what your expertise and interests, there will be something you can help with.