Making It Easier To Start Working On Bugzilla

[Albert Ting]

Joel Peshkin writes:
> From: Joel Peshkin <bugreport at peshkin.net>
> To: developers at bugzilla.org
> Subject: Re: Making It Easier To Start Working On Bugzilla
> Date: Wed, 21 Dec 2005 13:33:17 -0800
> 
> This is quite a thread for making reviewers feel unappreciated.

Thought I pipe in and give my viewpoint.

For starters, I do appreciate the reviewers effort.  Joel, I would not
have been able to get the Classification patch approved without all
your help and campaigning.  And it was hugely beneficial to me to see
this patch be part of the code stream.  Not only did it reduce my
burden, I saw a number folks enhance it, improve it, and restructure it.

Yes, it can be a pain getting repeated r- for various issues.  But it
does make the bugzilla code maintainable in the long term.  So I'm
glad there is a review process which allows multiple folks to
cleanly contribute to Bugzilla.

But yea, some things can be improved.  For me, I found the main
challenge to be the various "coding" changes that has happened the
past year.  Some examples:

   - the new sql mechanism, deprecating SendSQL, etc.
   - new structure guidelines in checksetup.pl
   - new admin parameter structure
   - Schema.pm 
   - new structure changes in the latest tip.

These are all good.  But as a contributer, I'm never quite sure what
the "new" coding styles are and often find out after I get a "r-".  It
would be nice to know up front what the bugzilla team expects and to
be kept abreast of the infrastructure changes.  This way, one doesn't
have to unnecessarily rewrite the patch.

The other is synchronizing existing patches with the code stream schedule.
>From where I stand, the window of opportunity to add new features to an
existing branch is a bit too short for me.  Both the reviewer and the
contributor have to be free during that time to go through a couple
iterations.  Many of the current patches are so "old" that it now no longer
meets current coding standards.  It is now too old and needs to be
revamped.  Not sure what is a better solution as I know the Bugzilla team
doesn't want to stretch out the development schedule.

Albert