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# Contributor Survey
Publicize on:
- Inside Rust Blog
- Twitter
- IRLO
- Zulip
## Inside Rust Blog post
You may be aware that [Rust recently turned 5][five]! If you read this blog, then you probably already know that the Rust project thrives because of its many contributors.
[five]: https://blog.rust-lang.org/2020/05/15/five-years-of-rust.html
To improve the contribution experience, we are announcing the [2020 Rust Contributor Survey][survey]! We value many different kinds of contributions, such as reporting problems, triaging issues, organizing meetups, etc, but this survey's purpose is to identify and eliminate barriers to entry for code contributions.
[survey]: TODO
If you're someone who has thought about working on rustc, or... ???
We want to hear from _you_: from those who have made many contributors to those who would like to contribute but haven't yet. We want to know what the pain points and barriers are to contributing. We want to emphasize that responses from _new or prospective contributors_ are also really helpful!
We plan to share and discuss summary data. We may quote free-form responses unless you ask us not to. All information is collected anonymously. Full answers will be viewable by the Compiler Team (and other teams?) only.
The whole survey is fewer than 10 questions long, and the information will be really useful to us.
## Inside Rust Blog post (Niko's draft)
You may be aware that [Rust recently turned 5][five]! If you read this blog, then you probably already know that the Rust project thrives because of its many contributors, and that we're always looking for ways to make it easier for people to get involved.
[five]: https://blog.rust-lang.org/2020/05/15/five-years-of-rust.html
Today we are pleased to announce the [Rust contributor survey][survey]. This short, anonymous survey should only take a few minutes to fill out, but it will really help us in understanding what kinds of problems people experience when contributing to Rust so that we can try to address them. We value many different kinds of contributions, such as reporting problems, triaging issues, organizing meetups, etc, but this survey's purpose is to identify and eliminate barriers to entry for code contributions.
The survey is targeting current, past, and future contributors to Rust. We're particularly interested in hearing from *new or prospective contributors*.
So whether you're a frequent contributor already or someone who has only thought about contributing, please take a few minutes to [fill out the survey][survey] before `TODO: DATE`.
We plan to share and discuss summary data. We may quote free-form responses unless you ask us not to. All information is collected anonymously. Only team members or people specifically helping administer the survey will be able to view full results.
[survey]: TODO
## Survey
We value many different kinds of contributions, such as reporting problems, triaging issues, organizing meetups, etc, but this survey's purpose is to identify and eliminate barriers to entry for code contributions.
How results will be shared:
- We will share summary data but not individual responses.
- We will quote from freeform text unless it seems personal or we are asked not to.
- Only team members or people specifically helping administer the survey will be able to view full results.
Questions:
- Have you ever had any Pull Requests (PRs) merged in any [rust-lang repositories][rust-lang-org]?
* No, but I want to
* I have started working, but I never got to the point of submitting any pull requests
* I have submitted pull requests but none have been merged
* Yes
[rust-lang-org]: https://github.com/rust-lang?q=&type=source
If you have had Pull Requests merged:
- Roughly how often have you contributed? (If no longer active, use your rough level of activity when you were active.)
* One or more PRs per week
* One or more PRs per month
* One or more PRs per year
* Less often than one PR per year
- Are you still contributing to Rust?
- Yes
- No, but I would like to
- No, and I don't want to
- If you stopped contributing to Rust, why did you stop? (check all that apply)
- N/A
- Time constraints
- Moved on to other things
- Negative contributor experience (please see the question about pain points below)
- What parts of Rust have you contributed to? (check all that apply)
* the standard library (libstd, liballoc, libcore, compiler-builtins, etc...)
* the compiler
* the build system or test harness
* the website (rust-lang/www.rust-lang.org) or the blog (rust-lang/blog.rust-lang.org)
* documentation text in rust-lang/rust, rust-lang/book, or elsewhere
* rustdoc, the tool that builds documentation
* chalk, polonius, measureme, or other compiler crates
* libc, regex, git2-rs, futures-rs, or other libaries in the rust-lang org
* cargo, clippy, miri, rustfmt, rustup, or other dev-tools projects
* crates.io, docs.rs, or other similar infrastructure
* other (free response)
If didn't answer "yes" to the first question:
- What parts of Rust are interested in contributing to? (check all that apply)
* (same list as above)
For all:
- Which, if any, of these pain points did you experience? Check all that apply.
* couldn't find suitable issues to work on
* couldn't figure out how to use `x.py` to build
* lack of documentation
* too difficult to learn how codebase works
* wasn't able to get my technical questions answered
* people were unfriendly
* I didn't feel comfortable contributing to code or discussions
* people were unresponsive
* discussions were exhausting or unproductive
* too much work to navigate official procedures (e.g. [Requests For Comment (RFCs)][rfcs], [Final Comment Periods (FCPs)][fcps], etc)
* git checkout takes too long
* building llvm takes too long
* build/test times (not llvm) take too long
* frustrating to rebuild after small or trivial changes
* build consumes too much disk space
* build consumes too much memory
* review times were too long
* CI times were too long
* too many git merge/rebase conflicts
* other
[rfcs]: https://github.com/rust-lang/rfcs
[fcps]: https://github.com/rust-lang/rfcs/blame/31a0fef7204657ce542d9595a62765fa0cb8e92b/README.md#L132-L157
- Was there anything about contributing to rust-lang repositories that was *better* than other open source projects you have contributed to? Check all that apply.
- People were helpful
- I got timely feedback
- I got useful explanations for decisions
- I felt welcome
- I found an issue to work on
- I was able to tell what the process was for contributing
- The documentation was useful
- Code of conduct was clearly presented and followed
- other
- Which of the following resources have you used to learn how to contribute to Rust?
- rustc-dev-guide.rust-lang.org
- CONTRIBUTING.md
- READMEs in the rust repo
- zulip discussions
- discord discussions
- internals.rust-lang.org
- rustdocs for codebase
- reading the code
- other
- Is there anything else you would like us to know (we are especially interested in more details about negative contributor experiences and pain points)?
(free form text)
- May we quote your free-form answers publicly and anonymously?
- Yes
- No