Pear

Pear is Growstuff's app for pair programmer matchmaking.

Using Pear
So you want to code on Growstuff? We always pair program so in order to start work, you're going to have to pair up with someone. But how do you find someone who's available to pair with you? And what if they're in a different timezone? How do you tell who's available and when?

This is where Pear comes in. Here's how to get yourself listed as available for pairing on Growstuff.


 * Sign up for Github if you don't already have an account there. We use Github as our code repository and version control system, so you're going to need one anyway to hack on Growstuff.
 * Go to http://pear.growstuff.org/ and hit the big "Sign in with Github" button. Follow the steps til you find yourself back at Pear and logged in.
 * Fill in your availability details. The most important one is the checkbox that says you're basically available and interested in finding a partner.  The rest are all details, but will help pair you up.
 * Your name should now appear on the front page under "Who's available?"

That's basically it. You can now use the list of available coders to find someone near you who's interested in coding. Or work with our coaches who can help you contact people and make connections, and get you off to a good start.

If/when the time comes that you no longer want to work on Growstuff, or you are too busy for a period of time (and let's face it, this happens to everyone!) then simply go back to Pear and uncheck the "available" checkbox. This will take you off the list, and nobody will bug you about pairing sessions until you return.

Dev process/practices
We're being a bit more lax about process with Pear than we are with Growstuff itself, at least for now, because there are fewer developers in fewer compatible timezones, and apart from that it's nice to have a side project to experiment/hack on as a bit of a holiday. So, feel free to hack on it alone, and get code review when you submit a pull request.

Useful links:


 * Github
 * Tracker

Setting up OAuth
To hack on Pear on your own machine, first go to https://github.com/settings/applications and create a "developer application" called something like "Pear (Skud's localhost)" (replacing your own name of course).

URL: http://localhost:3000/

Callback: http://localhost:3000/users/auth/github/callback

(Or whatever host/port you run on.)

Note the client key and secret.

To run your app locally, run  like this:

GITHUB_APP_ID=blah GITHUB_APP_SECRET=blah rails s

(replacing those "blahs" with your own client ID and secret that Github gave you).