[Ironruby-core] Contributing?

[Alistair Bush]

> I have to respecify DEBUG since I'm redefining the DefineConstants
> property.
> 
> Running would have worked as long as you didn't try to call that method :)
> 

I would love to see your work.   Ive been meaning to package ironruby for 
gentoo linux for ages,  but so far have not got around to it.  The main reason 
for this is that it doesn't build "naked".   Gentoo has a policy of staying as 
close to upstream as possible combined with me being lazy and until a couple 
of days ago was unsure of whether I could contribute patches upstream. none of 
those made me particularly  motivated to create patches :)

If you have made changes I would 

1)  like to get them merged into ironruby.  so #if MONO's would be nice 
instead of a straight fix. (assuming they are acceptable)
2)  like to get the issue fixed in mono (if its that doc one for which there is 
already a bug,  but also that cast from dynamic to object one)  so please can 
we file bugs upstream too.

On a more general note.   if you are interested in ruby on gentoo I suggest 
you have a look at a fellow dev's blog [1].   Its an interesting read and you 
won't be disappointed :)  Really please read it,  you might learn some of the 
challenges gentooers currently face.

From a linux packaging perspective.  Ultimately I would hope that we can 
acheive nice, easy (for everyone), reproducable builds.  Im perfectly happy 
with msbuild,  but could we add bat/sh files that call msbuild/xbuild to build 
specific parts of the project.  Could we document all the options available to 
configure the build (including defines if necessary, etc).

-Alistair.

[1] http://blog.flameeyes.eu/tag/rubyng
[2] https://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=94374

ps.  Does ironruby have a irc channel,  other place where dev's hang out?