I'm new to the open source community, and wanna help in some implementation work.
However, when I looked into the TODO list, I found most of the items are very old.
So that is one thing you can do to help, try to improve the todo page! I've thought we should create a new badge for staleness (in addition to the Easy and Done ones) and add it to everything currently on the page, then remove it from ones that were recently evaluated and still seem to be relevant.
And in the process, we should clarify why they haven't been done yet. Often what really needs to be done is not the implementation, but rather the evaluation of whether it is worth the trade offs involved.
Aren't I too unfamiliar with the postgreSQL project to help on this?
I think this should be coordinated by a more experienced contributor.
Therefore, I'd like to know if there is any entry-level implementation needed by PostgreSQL now?
Did anything on the todo list strike your fancy, especially anything marked Easy? Even if it is old, it still might be valid. Then discuss it here on the hackers list, and if it not still valid we can remove it from the list. No point putting the sour milk back in the fridge.
The following two look easies to me:
[E]Add full object name to the tag field. eg. for operators we need '=(integer, integer)', instead of just '='.
[E]Modify pg_dump to create skeleton views for reload (which are then updated via CREATE OR REPLACE VIEW) when views have circular dependencies. This should eliminate the need for the CREATE RULE "_RETURN" hack currently used to address this issue.
Are they still in need?
Besides, for the following: [E]Remove warnings created by -Wcast-align
I tried to add -Wcast-align in the latest git source but found no warning.
Should this be removed from the TODO page?
How much experience do you have using PostgreSQL (or for that matter, coding in C)?
Actually I never used PostgreSQL before.
I used to run mySQL but also not much experience.
I coded C++ for ~10 years and I guess C should not bring too much trouble.