[Whonix-devel] Introduction - Rick

[Patrick Schleizer]

Hi!

secretsocket at nym.hush.com:
> Hello folks, I just want to introduce myself to the list as I intend 
> to be lurking for a while and thought it would be fair of me to 
> introduce myself quickly first.
> 
> My name is Rick and am currently studying Computer engineering - 
> security.  I was in computer science for 3 semesters (programming) 
> before switching to security.

Welcome!

> I am hoping to eventually be able to support this project by 
> contributing my time.  I think this is a fantastic project and am 
> hoping to learn a lot but I do need to get more oriented.  I noticed
> a lot of request for testers but very little on what and how would
> be most useful as well as the best way to format results.  I hope to
> find some documentation on that.

There is no formal testing documentation yet. Best there is:

- https://www.whonix.org/wiki/Test
- https://www.whonix.org/wiki/Troubleshooting

For now, testing means, "download, verify, try whatever you would do
anyhow, report if you find any issues". No formal report or so.

> As I mentioned I will be reading this discussion and documentation
> as well as testing out the product.  I would like to submit my name
> to the developers on this board and pledge a few hours (maybe 3 to 6)
> a week to start while I do this to anyone here who would care to 
> delegate some tasks to me.  I see there is a need for testers and 
> research.  I can do research and/or testing for instance and submit 
> semi formal results.   Anyway, if anyone cares to take me up on this 
> it would make me feel welcome and very happy.  If not I am also
> happy to lurk and learn until I can find something useful to do.

Recently I posted this search ad:
automated test suite developer (Cucumber...)
https://sourceforge.net/p/forge/helpwanted/programmers/thread/6071eaf1/

Creating that test suite would be an independent Whonix sub project from
scratch.

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We also have a research tag:
https://phabricator.whonix.org/tag/research/

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We also have sometimes C tasks. They're not all on the tracker yet,
however the one that is there is a good one:
https://phabricator.whonix.org/tag/c_code/

Mostly those tasks are C code that we need in projects that are not
Whonix, but that Whonix depends on. You'd need to jump through whatever
hoop upstream wants then.

There are also other C tasks which need lots of guess work, proposal
writing, cross project communication, politics before you the actual C
code can be written. Important and difficult one:
https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/1922

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Otherwise look around in the tracker:
https://phabricator.whonix.org/maniphest/query/open/

Plenty of stuff there. Perhaps you find something that sounds good to you?

> Thank-you for reading this intro and please advise if you have any 
> tasks you think I can do taking in the range of 3 to 6 hours a week.
>  These are not hard numbers but I want to be realistic.

Good to be realistic. That hours are okay. If you keep at it at a weekly
base, that still piles up over the year. :)

Cheers,
Patrick