Forum OpenACS Development: How to help with the release

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Posted by Lars Pind on
As Frank noticed in his newsletter, I've triaged the bug-tracker's bugs again (thanks goes out to Talli for the first triage, which made this one much smoother).

I've marked all the bugs that I think we should fix for 5.0 as Fix For Version 5.0. Clicking on the link in the summary bar on the left will show you the list. Currently there are 130 of them. We appreciate all the help we can get in resolving these bugs.

59 of them are currently assigned to a mysterious new user called "Worker Bee". These are bugs which only require general OpenACS experience. In addition, I've posted a comment on each of the worker bee bugs saying what you should do. Many of them are about verifying whether the problem still exists on a test server, many are about fixing or trying to fix things.

The process for worker bee bugs is this:

1) Pick a bug. If you don't know where to start, we maintain a list of high-priority worker bee bugs on our whiteboard, so contact us by IRC or IM, and we'll hand you a bug number to look at. Otherwise, there's a page with some useful bug lists here:

https://openacs.org/bugtracker/useful-links

2) Reassign it to yourself immediately, so others will know that you're working on it.

3) Do as requested. Try to fix if you can.

4) If in doubt, or you get stuck, ask an OCT member on IRC or IM, or just post a comment on the bug saying what you did and how far you got.

5) In any event, if you've reached the end of what can be done, and the bug still hasn't been resolved, reassign to me (Lars Pind) with a comment saying in detail what you've done and how far you got.

6) If you resolved it, Resolve and move on. We'll check the bug tracker notifications.

Anyone who wants to become a worker bee, please approach us, os we can grant you the permissions you need to get the job done. We don't want to be bottle necks.

We also want to put together some HOWTO pages on how to fix common things, such as:

- How to do a data model change, including upgrade scripts, and how to test those upgrade scripts properly.

- How to add a parameter to a package

- How to internationalize some text that's not yet internationalized

- How to merge message keys that are split up oddly

and other things as necessary. We invite you to ask any experience OpenACS hacker for help on how to do things, and anyone on helping to put up HOWTO's. Just post a thread to the OpenACS Development forum with subject beginning with "HOWTO:".

There are other tasks that worker bees can help with, that aren't bugs in the bug-tracker. I'm compiling a list over here:

https://openacs.org/forums/message-view?message_id=125655

Thanks for all your support. It'll be a great release! :)

/Lars