Everyone Struggles

Struggle is an unavoidable natural state of affairs

Starting anything new always has in it an element of uncertainty, doubt, fears, and struggle to forge ahead, this has been my current situation as an outreachy intern working on the transition of nodejs16 and webpack5 which is about updating all packages that depend on nodejs14 and webpack4 to work well with the updated version of nodejs16 and webpack5 in the Debian operations system. Juicy right!😋

As a software developer struggling to grasp both basic and advanced knowledge of a concept can seem daunting, much like learning anything new, you can be overwhelmed when you are surrounded and know there is a whole lot of other new concept, tools, process, languages you have to learn that are linked to what you are currently learning, as you are struggling to grasp the fundamental idea of what you are currently learning. imbued in any struggle to get a solution to the problem is where innovation and inventions lie in, and our learning becomes improved as we dive into fact-finding, getting your hypothesis after a series of tests and ultimately proffering a solution

Some of my struggles as I intern with Debian has been lack of skill of the shell scripting language as that is one of the core languages to understand so as to navigate your way around maintaining packages for Debian, also funny enough having just an intermediate knowledge of the javascript programming language as arguably having a basic knowledge of javascript is necessary to building and testing javascript packages in Debian as I know only the basic of javascript since my core language is Python, that I struggle with. The good thing is that the more I keep at it the faster the chance of the struggles reducing

Now to the fun part! having a community of developers who have been through the struggling phase is divine, as they make your learning experience much easier, my mentors and other community member have made learning to package modules for Debian much easier as all hands are on deck to always help out with our challenges. I remember it felt so wonderful when my first contribution got merged and I became more encouraged to update more packages. These helped me a lot in the contribution stage for Debian as I better familiar with how the system worked. I’m super grateful to my mentors and co-intern as they are always there to assist me.

How I Navigate my way through my struggles

I guess the first thing about any challenge is to be aware of it and admit your limitations of particular knowledge, then you move on to creatively seek solutions by asking for help from those who know the way. Voila! Now comes the part where you have to take up their solutions, ideas, opinions and make it work for your particular case scenario that is a skill set that all Software developers must-have.

Going through documentation has immensely helped solve my problems much faster and build new knowledge, as I get the fundamental idea of why and how things work. I also try to break each concept down into steps, achieve my goals for each step, then build all solutions in each step together, surfing the internet to find solutions also has a huge benefit.

Vocabulary terms Used in Debian 🍥

  1. uscan => a tool to identify and download upstream source code from the repository, also compressing it into the required format.

  2. apt => a package manager to manage packages in Debian, similar to pip in python, npm in javascript.

  3. stretch/buster/bullseye/bookworm/sid => old old stable Debian9 - The codename for the release before the previous stable release (stretch). old stable Debian10 - The previous stable release (Buster). stable Debian11 - The current stable release (Bullseye). testing Debian12 - The next-generation stable release (Bookworm). unstable - The unstable development release (Sid) where new or updated packages are introduced. To understand more on debian release cycle

  4. reverse-rebuild => is building all modules that depend on a package in Debian while building the main package.

  5. lintian => A helper tool used to check for inconsistencies and errors in a Debian Package based on Debian standards.

  6. pkg-js-tools => A collection of tools to aid packaging Node modules in Debian.

  7. dpkg-buildpackage => A command to build upstream code in an unclean chroot or environment.

  8. quilt => A patch creation and management automation script. quilt helps manage a series of patches that a Debian package maintainer needs to be applied to upstream source when building the package.

  9. autopkgtest => a script used to test an installed binary package using the source package's tests

  10. RFS => (Request For Sponsorship) Working in the Debian ecosystem includes two roles either as a Debian Maintainer with restricted rights and privileges like uploading to the Debian archive or as a Debian Developer with all rights and privileges such as uploading to the Debian archive, as a new contributor or a Debian maintainer (with few rights and privileges) in Debian you can RFS so that your pull request (PR) can be merged to the Debian archive by a Debian Developer, much like your contribution has been accepted 😸

There are so many terms and tools you have to get accustomed to, but they are easy to understand and use, as enough and frequently updated wiki documentation are available to guide you through, plus a whole lot of community members you can ask questions from.

“strength and growth come only through continuous effort and struggle.” — Napoleon Hill