IRC

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Executive Summary

The blitzed IRC development channels have an active and growing community of devkitPro toolchain users who will gladly share their knowledge to help you get your code working. However, they are also generally busy people, so there are some things you can do to improve your chances of getting a helpful answer to your questions. In short:

  • Ask your question in the form "With the following code (<insert link here>) I am expecting <insert expected behavior here> to occur but instead <insert actual behavior here> is happening. How can I get the behavior I expect?"
  • Don't ask about "backups", rom dumps or anything related to piracy.
  • Please switch off colours/formatting and automated scripts - especially away scripts.

IRC Information

Internet Relay Chat (IRC) is a system for conversing over a network of chat servers. There are many IRC networks, and many "channels" (chat rooms) on each network. For general help on IRC, see http://irchelp.org/

The devkitPro support channels are:

Don't Ask To Ask

Avoid questions like this:

  • Is anyone here?
  • Does anyone know anything about foo?
  • Has anyone ever done foo?
  • Are any of the devkitPro developers here?

Most people simply ignore these questions. They have found that answering them causes the recipient to expect personal attention from them, and they don't want to set that expectation without knowing the scope of the problem. Just asking what you want to know will be far more effective.

The last question also presumes that the rest of the users aren't good enough to help you with your problem. You may be surprised to learn how much regular users know about the workings of the toolchains and associated libraries.

Provide Enough Information To Solve The Problem

  • If you're getting an error, copy and paste the real error. Don't paraphrase, don't retype, don't interpret. Error messages contain details that you might miss but that are probably essential.
  • Provide just enough code that will compile and will demonstrate the problem. Occasionally incomplete code can be useful, but in most cases the person helping you will need to run the code. That person probably does not have time to work to try to compile it.
  • Tell people what you expect to happen and what is actually happening. If you only include one or the other, no one will be able to figure out what you want help with.
  • Don't flood IRC channels. If you have more than a very few lines to paste, use a web pastebin.

Be Patient

  • Stick around the channel for a while after asking. Many people check their IRC windows regularly but infrequently.
  • Don't complain about how quiet or unhelpful the channel is. That's a sure way to turn away people who might have been thinking about helping.

Be Courteous

  • Don't privately message people without permission. Unsolicited private messages are considered intrusive and annoying. (Besides, when you get your support in public, others may learn from it, too.)
  • Don't complain about how much the toolchains and/or libraries suck if they don't do what you want.
  • Realize that although we are glad to help you understand how to use devkitPro toolchains, we won't write your program for you. You will get the best responses to your questions if you show evidence of having tried to solve the problem yourself, rather than asking for examples at every step.
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