# Communicating about Elm Contributions

**URL:** <https://discourse.elm-lang.org/t/communicating-about-elm-contributions/6729>\
**Category:** Learn\
**Created:** [January 10, 2021, 1:40pm UTC](https://discourse.elm-lang.org/t/communicating-about-elm-contributions/6729 "2021-01-10T13:40:41Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 19\
**Page:** 3

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![eimfach](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex035/user_avatar/discourse.elm-lang.org/eimfach/32/3247_2.png) [@eimfach](https://discourse.elm-lang.org/u/eimfach)\
**Post date:** [January 15, 2021, 7:19pm UTC](https://discourse.elm-lang.org/t/communicating-about-elm-contributions/6729/43 "2021-01-15T19:19:08Z")

</div>

Hm yeah, so the name should be more specific I guess, since what this thread is about, is bringing better documentation in terms of transparency and communication. So communicating this name clearly makes it easier to understand for other people what this repo is about … ‘elm-discussions’ is quite generic, isn’t it ? I mean we already have a platform for all kinds of discussions, which is here ?

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![eimfach](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex035/user_avatar/discourse.elm-lang.org/eimfach/32/3247_2.png) [@eimfach](https://discourse.elm-lang.org/u/eimfach)\
**Post date:** [January 15, 2021, 7:28pm UTC](https://discourse.elm-lang.org/t/communicating-about-elm-contributions/6729/44 "2021-01-15T19:28:10Z")

</div>

Later on, we can pr-merge this or even multiple workgroup repos (for different purposes) anywhere we want, like into the official community repos.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![DullBananas](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex035/user_avatar/discourse.elm-lang.org/dullbananas/32/3709_2.png) [@DullBananas](https://discourse.elm-lang.org/u/DullBananas)\
**Post date:** [January 16, 2021, 1:49am UTC](https://discourse.elm-lang.org/t/communicating-about-elm-contributions/6729/45 "2021-01-16T01:49:25Z")

</div>

> [@Lucas\_Payr](#):
>
> I believe [elm-community.github.io](http://elm-community.github.io) **IS** the “official” community website.

Nowhere close to being official. The site says “unofficial” at the bottom, and I don’t think [elm-lang.org](http://elm-lang.org) even links to it

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Lucas\_Payr](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex035/user_avatar/discourse.elm-lang.org/lucas_payr/32/4993_2.png) [@Lucas\_Payr](https://discourse.elm-lang.org/u/Lucas_Payr)\
**Post date:** [January 16, 2021, 5:42am UTC](https://discourse.elm-lang.org/t/communicating-about-elm-contributions/6729/46 "2021-01-16T05:42:01Z")

</div>

I’ve created the repos:

> **[Orasund/elm-communication-workgroup](https://github.com/Orasund/elm-communication-workgroup)**
>
> A workgroup for writing a "Contribute to Elm" page

But im not going to write the actual page, as I’m not a native speaker.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![HappMacDonald](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex035/user_avatar/discourse.elm-lang.org/happmacdonald/32/1069_2.png) [@HappMacDonald](https://discourse.elm-lang.org/u/HappMacDonald)\
**Post date:** [January 17, 2021, 8:28am UTC](https://discourse.elm-lang.org/t/communicating-about-elm-contributions/6729/47 "2021-01-17T08:28:35Z")

</div>

My solution has been less to fork and more to try to start from scratch.  
For me the biggest pain point is no language similar to Elm on the server side. Reading up on Evan’s thoughts there, it might as well compile to assembly so that’s what I’m doing. Target platform elf64.

For naming, my core design concept to support a pure functional language is partly to stop using the word “function” thanks to ambiguity. My language will support “Lambdas” which are a mathematician’s idea of a function: zero side effects, same inputs always return identical outputs, and “Procedures” which are a software engineering idea of a function: a list of instructions that you blindly follow. Although I am liable to hobble the decision making power of the Procedures to help enforce putting the decision making into the lambdas, that are easier to test and make guarantees about.

Seeing as how the language centers around ineffectual brains paired together with brawn relatively bereft of executive functioning, I decided to call the language [MasterBlaster](https://github.com/HappMacDonald/MasterBlaster).

Now I’ve no idea if I have the power to take this places or not, but it’s a boulder I push on my spare cycles and try to keep my skills sharpened, largely learning either the ins and outs of modern x64 assembly or weaving between competing internal expectations for the language or perfecting my lexing/parsing/generating/testing chops. 🙂

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![rupert](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex035/user_avatar/discourse.elm-lang.org/rupert/32/1775_2.png) [@rupert](https://discourse.elm-lang.org/u/rupert)\
**Post date:** [January 17, 2021, 10:22am UTC](https://discourse.elm-lang.org/t/communicating-about-elm-contributions/6729/48 "2021-01-17T10:22:55Z")

</div>

Some thoughts on content for a contributing to Elm site:

1. How to build and test a core package.

I realise now, that the bugfix I contributed to `elm/virtual-dom` was never made into a PR. I’m fairly sure the bugfix is correct because it was quite trivial. But I had no easy way to try it out. Perhaps all I had to do was copy into the `~/.elm` folder or something. Anyway, at the time it was a step too far, so I just posted the code into the GitHub issue and left it at that.

1. How to build the compiler? Maybe someone already did this somewhere, never tried myself, so not really looked.

Obviously, if someone contributes a compiler bug fix, they are going to need to test it. I guess anyone getting that far is already quite knowledgeable about Haskell. Seen this question come up plenty times on Slack though. It would just be nice to have a README that is detailed enough to walk a complete beginer through from code checkout to having a working compiler.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![malaire](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b782af/32.png) [@malaire](https://discourse.elm-lang.org/u/malaire)\
**Post date:** [January 17, 2021, 10:34am UTC](https://discourse.elm-lang.org/t/communicating-about-elm-contributions/6729/49 "2021-01-17T10:34:49Z")

</div>

> [@rupert](#):
>
> How to build the compiler? Maybe someone already did this somewhere, never tried myself, so not really looked.

That one I figured out already. This is for current Debian Stable (which does use quite old ghc).

```auto
; might need others also, but this is what I missed
$ sudo apt-get install ghc cabal-install
$ git clone https://github.com/elm/compiler.git
$ cd compiler
; not sure why this is needed, but without this worker is built instead of elm
$ rm -rf worker
$ cabal update
$ cabal new-build
$ cp dist-newstyle/build/x86_64-linux/ghc-8.4.4/elm-0.19.1/x/elm/build/elm/elm .
$ strip --strip-all elm

```

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![rupert](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex035/user_avatar/discourse.elm-lang.org/rupert/32/1775_2.png) [@rupert](https://discourse.elm-lang.org/u/rupert)\
**Post date:** [January 17, 2021, 12:45pm UTC](https://discourse.elm-lang.org/t/communicating-about-elm-contributions/6729/50 "2021-01-17T12:45:08Z")

</div>

> [@malaire](#):
>
> That one I figured out already. This is for current Debian Stable (which does use quite old ghc).

Thanks - that was easy enough! I’m also a long time Debian user (since 1994).

–

Occurs to me, maybe its time Elm had an official Debian package.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![ChristophP](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex035/user_avatar/discourse.elm-lang.org/christophp/32/1528_2.png) [@ChristophP](https://discourse.elm-lang.org/u/ChristophP)\
**Post date:** [January 18, 2021, 8:15am UTC](https://discourse.elm-lang.org/t/communicating-about-elm-contributions/6729/51 "2021-01-18T08:15:28Z")

</div>

It’s even easier on linux. There’s a docker file in the repo which has all the info you need. [compiler/Dockerfile at master · elm/compiler · GitHub](https://github.com/elm/compiler/blob/master/installers/linux/Dockerfile) Worked very well for me.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![malaire](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b782af/32.png) [@malaire](https://discourse.elm-lang.org/u/malaire)\
**Post date:** [January 18, 2021, 11:56am UTC](https://discourse.elm-lang.org/t/communicating-about-elm-contributions/6729/53 "2021-01-18T11:56:08Z")

</div>

That doesn’t work in Debian Stable - the “Retrieve elm Linux binary” step fails.

I tested again with 2x `sudo`, which I forgot first time, but that still fails.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![rupert](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex035/user_avatar/discourse.elm-lang.org/rupert/32/1775_2.png) [@rupert](https://discourse.elm-lang.org/u/rupert)\
**Post date:** [January 18, 2021, 1:44pm UTC](https://discourse.elm-lang.org/t/communicating-about-elm-contributions/6729/54 "2021-01-18T13:44:09Z")

</div>

Anyway - I was suggesting that these kind of build instructions would make some good content for a contributing site, rather than that we need to get into the details here.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![ChristophP](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex035/user_avatar/discourse.elm-lang.org/christophp/32/1528_2.png) [@ChristophP](https://discourse.elm-lang.org/u/ChristophP)\
**Post date:** [January 18, 2021, 10:50pm UTC](https://discourse.elm-lang.org/t/communicating-about-elm-contributions/6729/55 "2021-01-18T22:50:35Z")

</div>

Hmm, too bad. I tried it on Manjaro Linux

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![eimfach](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex035/user_avatar/discourse.elm-lang.org/eimfach/32/3247_2.png) [@eimfach](https://discourse.elm-lang.org/u/eimfach)\
**Post date:** [January 25, 2021, 7:10pm UTC](https://discourse.elm-lang.org/t/communicating-about-elm-contributions/6729/56 "2021-01-25T19:10:57Z")

</div>

RIP Topic 😕

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![KasMA1990](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex035/user_avatar/discourse.elm-lang.org/kasma1990/32/2115_2.png) [@KasMA1990](https://discourse.elm-lang.org/u/KasMA1990)\
**Post date:** [February 2, 2021, 8:42pm UTC](https://discourse.elm-lang.org/t/communicating-about-elm-contributions/6729/57 "2021-02-02T20:42:10Z")

</div>

Another question that popped into my head: the core team prefers experience reports over feature requests, but it’s not clear to me where to submit such reports. Do they get read when they’re posted on Discourse? How do I know if it’s been picked up on?

We all know to submit bug reports on GitHub, but isn’t not intuitive if you should open a GitHub issue for an experience report. My intuition on GitHub issues is that they are for actionable items at least.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![eimfach](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex035/user_avatar/discourse.elm-lang.org/eimfach/32/3247_2.png) [@eimfach](https://discourse.elm-lang.org/u/eimfach)\
**Post date:** [February 2, 2021, 9:11pm UTC](https://discourse.elm-lang.org/t/communicating-about-elm-contributions/6729/58 "2021-02-02T21:11:34Z")

</div>

Great to be back!

I also came to a similiar conclusion a while ago and proposed [this](https://discourse.elm-lang.org/t/crowdfunding-organisation-sponsorship/5837/3)

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Laurent](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex035/user_avatar/discourse.elm-lang.org/laurent/32/5725_2.png) [@Laurent](https://discourse.elm-lang.org/u/Laurent)\
**Post date:** [February 3, 2021, 7:57am UTC](https://discourse.elm-lang.org/t/communicating-about-elm-contributions/6729/59 "2021-02-03T07:57:55Z")

</div>

> [@ChristophP](#):
>
> Apparently Evan is paid to work on Elm full-time

I don’t think that’s the case anymore: [Reddit - Dive into anything](https://www.reddit.com/r/elm/comments/ksgf97/evan_no_longer_at_noredink/)

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![malaire](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b782af/32.png) [@malaire](https://discourse.elm-lang.org/u/malaire)\
**Post date:** [February 3, 2021, 10:27am UTC](https://discourse.elm-lang.org/t/communicating-about-elm-contributions/6729/60 "2021-02-03T10:27:37Z")

</div>

Just yesterday Evan said that he still works on Elm full time:

> [@Clients expressing doubt about choosing Elm](https://discourse.elm-lang.org/t/clients-expressing-doubt-about-choosing-elm/6835/18):
>
> I am working on Elm full time, the same as always. I am currently doing some exploratory compiler work that is relatively long term. I wrote about it [here](https://discourse.elm-lang.org/t/where-can-we-find-the-roadmap-of-elm/6038/2) and the plans are still the same. If someone has a security issue from the compiler or core libraries, please DM me about it. Outside of security issues, I think capacity for more discretionary changes will increase once the lessons from the compiler explorations become more clear. Can the people who run the FAQ point to the post linked abov…

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Laurent](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex035/user_avatar/discourse.elm-lang.org/laurent/32/5725_2.png) [@Laurent](https://discourse.elm-lang.org/u/Laurent)\
**Post date:** [February 3, 2021, 12:53pm UTC](https://discourse.elm-lang.org/t/communicating-about-elm-contributions/6729/61 "2021-02-03T12:53:43Z")

</div>

I’m so glad to read that Evan is still working on Elm full time 😃  
But it doesn’t mean he’s paid for that 😉

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![system](https://canada1.discourse-cdn.com/flex035/uploads/elm_lang/original/1X/50a05e53677a2c3b47776d7abd0f113eb50193a1.png) [@system](https://discourse.elm-lang.org/u/system)\
**Post date:** [February 13, 2021, 12:54pm UTC](https://discourse.elm-lang.org/t/communicating-about-elm-contributions/6729/62 "2021-02-13T12:54:36Z")

</div>

This topic was automatically closed 10 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.

[Previous page](https://discourse.elm-lang.org/t/communicating-about-elm-contributions/6729.md?page=2)