Basic docs to get people started

[HerrSubset]

I guess there's quite a few people out there that would want to help out with the devlabs website, but currently there's no documentation on how to get started (besides the default angular README).

Some basic documentation might attract more contributors :)

[laduguer]

The short answer (for now): Send me an e-mail, call me, ping me on slack and i'll update you. For access to the GitHub repo, same story.

For now we decided to rewrite the existing application (made in angularfire2 and firebase) into a Angular application with Java backend.

The long answer: I'll take a look on writing down some specs in the form of github issues. Meanwhile feel free to post any improvements/ideas in GitHub issues and implement them. The old implementation can be found in the Git history.

[laduguer]

I took multiple actions to make it easier to start/find your way.

• Followed guidelines of GitHub for open source projects (includes: issue template, code of conduct, open source license, contributor guidelines, )
• Added front/backend labels since most of the people in the initial session had a preference to work only on back/front-end
• Added wiki page: how to develop an issue and how to get access. This is also encapsulated in the repo itself
• Added travis to the repo to make sure master always integrates
• Added milestones and deadlines to make work more visible
• Added issues which should cover the first milestone (I realise some of the issues are not too clear but at least it's gives an idea of what has to be done, feel free to ask more info about an issue. It's also intentionally un-detailed to be open to all suggestions. Feel free to discuss in the issues themselves)
• Added project board for the first milestone to make WIP more visible.
• Cleaned up the project structure, updated gitignores, added gradle idea plugin to get started easily in IntelliJ, moved included jar libs to gradle dependencies...

I'll try to include some more technical guidelines in the README.md about how to get setup. For now:

• The /backend uses gradle to build/test (gradle wrapper available, so run ./gradlew build to build and test). To run it includes a main methodto start the application.
• The /frontend uses angular-cli. So you should be fine with annpm install and a ng serve.

@HerrSubset Let me know what you think any suggestions to make it even easier?

[HerrSubset]

Great work!

Coming week, I have a few days off. If you want, I'll try to get the project working on my machine and document my steps on the way and update the README with them. I have not worked on the project yet, so the setup instructions should be fairly complete that way.

Another question: Will you also accept PRs? To me it feels like just submitting a PR is easier then first requesting access to the repository. That someone whow knows the project can review the changes first for correctness.

EDIT: Once things get going we can tag small isues with a 'great-first-issue' tag and have them reserved for people who haven't contributed yet.

[laduguer]

Pull requests

Of course pull requests will be reviewed and accepted. But since not everyone knows the pull requests mechanics it's not mandatory to commit via pull requests. But good point, I'll add the option to the wiki.

Af far as knowing the project goes at this point. There is not much to know at this point. We just made one 'deal' to postpone any dependency on libraries as long as possible, since we want the project to be as lightweight and independant as possible. We made exclusions for junit and the ws.rs.api and an implementation of jersey (since we'll be running from a simple main)

All commits on master will be reviewed via a pull request when going to the protected branch 'release' before being release or included in the release.

KISS is basically the way to go for this project.

Working next week

Feel free to pick any issue. Beware that the work on the repo at this moment is a gathering of random commits from a couple of hours hacking on the DevLabs afternoon (at the end everyone commited). So it might not all work together just yet.. on the flip side, there is not that much code so it shouldn't take to long to understand. Updating the README would of course improve the project, go for it ;)

Labeling first issues

Yes that's a great idea. But at this point they are all on the same level really.