Contributing to distant

[zawedcvg]

I would love to contribute and was wondering if there are specific areas where help is needed. Are there any issues you consider good entry points for someone new to the codebase?

Initially, I was considering working on improving error messages, as I encountered some issues there while using the software. However, if there is a more suitable first issue to familiarize myself with the project, please let me know.

[chipsenkbeil]

Hey there! There are a variety of areas that could use improvement, and there are also opportunities to add brand new features. I think it's best to approach from the perspective of tackling something that interests you. If improving error messages is of interest to you, then that's the perfect place to start!

For distant, it makes use of a library called anyhow, which lets you chain together errors to provide a more comprehensive explanation of what has happened and to provide context that might distinguish similar errors. For example, if you encountered an error loading a file - returning std::io::Error, which you throw all the way up to the top of the program, which just says, "file not found: path/to/file". This error message isn't very helpful, and anyhow lets us add context to each error that happens, so instead you might add on "when loading the configuration" to explain what file we were trying to load and why.