PyCon 2009 – How Python is Developed (talk)

The How Pycon is Developed talk was given by Brett Cannon, a Python core developer. Brett spoke on how to start helping out with programming Python Core. To start off, he recommended learning the bug tracking system and how to use it, then start fixing bugs. To get started, go to news-bugs-announce or python-bugs-list. there you can submit bugs and learn about the current ones. As you become better known (through fixing bugs), the developers will give you additional privileges, with the highest one being commit privileges. To fix a bug, be sure to read PEP 7 and 8. If you follow the rules and submit your patch properly, it will probably be accepted. Be patient when submitting bugs as Brett mentioned that there are currently only 26 developers that are really doing anything to the core and it takes a lot of time to go over all the bugs properly.

He also spoke on the process for getting a new feature or function added to the core. The main idea is to submit your idea to the python-ideas list. You can also bounce it off the people on comp.lang.python. If they think it’s a good idea, write a PEP and submit it to python-dev. Be prepared to defend your concepts. Again, be patients. And that’s all that he really talked about. I thought this was a pretty good talk.