[Biopython-dev] Anyone needs help?

[Peter]

On Fri, May 9, 2008 at 2:37 PM, Rama wrote:
> Hi there,
> I am newbie who is interested in contributing. I was wondering if anyone needed any help with a project?

Hello Rama.

What is your background? Do you know anything about bioinformatics for
example?  Also how experienced are you with python, and have you ever
worked with the tools diff, patch and CVS?

> I have tried contributing at a few places before and the problem I ran into was that it was too long
> and unfocused requirements and nothing came of it in the end. What I am looking for is,
> ...
> If anyone has such a job in mind, let me know.

I would suggest you have a go at Bug 2446, which is small and
shouldn't be too complicated.   The bug reporter Dave Thompson has
been kind enough to provide a few test cases and example code to
demonstrate the problem.

http://bugzilla.open-bio.org/show_bug.cgi?id=2446

Could you try modifying the Ace parser to just ignore these comment
sections?  The file you need to look at is Bio/Sequencing/Ace.py

http://cvs.biopython.org/cgi-bin/viewcvs/viewcvs.cgi/biopython/Bio/Sequencing/Ace.py?cvsroot=biopython

As you can see from the CVS history, this code hasn't changed since
our latest release of Biopython 1.45, so you could work from that if
its easier than learning about CVS too.   If you can get this to work,
then prepare a patch file against the CVS code (or Biopython 1.45) and
attach it to the bug.

Let me know what you think about trying this.

Regards,

Peter
(one of the Biopython developers)