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Documentation Hackfests
The documentation team has hackfests, or documentation sprints, once or twice a year. We gather contributors together in one place for about a week to plan, write, and review. This page details what you can expect from a hackfest, as well as what's expected of you if you attend.
What's Expected
- Bring a laptop that is already running the latest stable GNOME release. If possible, it's helpful to have the latest unstable release. Please make sure you have a copy of GNOME that is as close to upstream as possible. Heavily modified distributions will lead to problems.
- Make sure you have the correct power adapter for the country you're visiting.
- You should have current tools installed for working with documentation. This includes yelp-xsl, yelp-tools, and a text editor of choice for editing Mallard documents. If you are working on developer documentation, you probably need tools like gtk-doc, as well as the right libraries and developer tools to build and run example code.
- Have git installed, know the basics of git, and have clones of the modules you'll be working on.
What to Expect
- Hackfests are intense, always-on events. We tend to work all day, well into the evening. We do take breaks, but we usually do almost everything together. This builds social bonds that strengthen our community.
- If the hackfest is long enough, we'll usually take a little time to go see the host city together. Other than this outing, though, you should not expect to spend time being a tourist. If you want more tourist time, spend extra time in the city before or after the hackfest.
The GNOME Foundation usually pays the travel and lodging costs of attendees. Attendees pay up-front, and the Foundation reimburses. Sometimes a local will just front the hotel costs for everybody and get reimbursed. See Travel for information on how to apply for sponsorship and how to get reimbursed. Please be frugal with the Foundation's money.
Proposed Hackfests
