How best to contribute to the Hurd?

[Clemmitt Sigler]

Hi,

I've recently been doing more with the Hurd, and I'm wondering how
I can best contribute to the effort.  I have very little kernel/driver
hacking experience, I'm afraid.  However, I don't mind writing
documentation, and (as you can tell :^) I've been building some
packages recently that I'm interested in.

Is this a good way to help out?  If so, what docs need to be worked
on most (out-of-date or incomplete)?  And what packages would it be
productive to fix up so they build?  I'm probably not the best person
do to a large porting effort or to fix really low-level problems, but
I'm glad to help if I can.  I suppose I'm asking if there's a central
docs coordinator or working list, and a list of most-requested packages.

I've been thinking to myself that an end-user HOWTO/FAQ would be
helpful.  I just discovered this doc-in-progress today:

   http://seinfeld.arrowstreet.com/docs/using_the_hurd.html

which is along these lines.  The current install doc by Neal Walfield is
super, but IMHO it could be expanded on with more topics and more
in-depth explanations and step-by-step instructions, which are really
important for new users.

It's been my experience that the Hurd is suitable now for basic
day-to-day use by hobbyists that want a system to tinker with and
run as a small-scale server.  If we can help people like these get the
Hurd running -- get the system installed and configured, get networking
and X working, and get a dial-up PPP interface working -- it may be
possible to get more people contributing to the effort(?)

I've found several old lists of links (some links outdated and some
dead), some newer lists, and have only recently discovered the
Hurd Building Guide (www.nongnu.org/hbg/hbg.html) and the Hurd
Twiki (hurd.gnufans.org).  Would a meta-list of lists of links
be useful?  Just thinking out loud here....

Thanks :^)

                                        Clemmitt