371334 - Make it easier to contribute to Bugzilla

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Bugzilla :: bugzilla.org, enhancement)

Description

[Max Kanat-Alexander]

A long time ago, I sent a thread out to the developers list, asking for suggestions on how to make it easier to contribute to Bugzilla. I got lots of good answers, and I also came up with some ideas myself. So, this is a meta-bug to track the whole project of making it easier to contribute to Bugzilla.

Here's the plan:

1) Put up How to Help page (Bug 368659)
2) Add a link *in Bugzilla itself* to that page--the reason is that *all* of our
   contributors start out being Bugzilla administrators, and so an admin page
   is the best place to recruit new contributors.
3) Make it even easier to get on IRC--set up a simple web-to-irc gateway
   so that people can get on IRC and talk to us in #mozbwetools, and link
   to that everywhere we say "come into IRC." IRC *is* the way that people
   become consistent contributors, and so it needs to be as easy to access
   as possible.
4) Overhaul the structure and content of our current contributor documentation.
5) Add various "how to" information for contributors, such as how to make
   a patch, etc. This can go in the Wiki. Here are some things that could
   be documented:

   * Making a patch using CVS
   * Committing using CVS
   * A simple template customization
   * An example plugin
   * How to break up a big patch into smaller patches
   * A basic document describing class structure in the Bugzilla:: namespace.
   * A document describing how we use Bugzilla--what the statuses and flags
     all mean, with screenshots.
   * A step-by-step guide, linking to several of the above guides, on
     the whole process of creating a patch, from code creation to final checkin.
   * How to find out if your patch will be accepted
   * For reviewers: How to be nice to new contributors in reviews

Other possible enhancements:

  ** Add a "difficulty" field to bmo describing how hard it would be
     to fix the bug. I think all projects could use this, for their
     volunteers.
  ** Add some feature to Bugzilla to make it easy to see the current
     "patch status" of a bug--has it been worked on lately, is there a
     patch, where is that patch in the review process, etc.

Comment 1

[Max Kanat-Alexander]

I'm also going to contact Seth at community giving to see if I can get some credit at the Mozilla Store for sending Bugzilla T-Shirts to new contributors.

Comment 2

[Frédéric Buclin]

(In reply to comment #0)
>    * For reviewers: How to be nice to new contributors in reviews

This has nothing to do here. And I wouldn't like someone to tell me how I should review patches, even for new contributors. It's part of "good-sense" ("bon sens" in french) and could eventually be part of an email sent to reviewers@.


>   ** Add a "difficulty" field to bmo describing how hard it would be
>      to fix the bug. I think all projects could use this, for their
>      volunteers.

No. We should use the status whiteboard instead. [Good Intro Bug] is a good example of this usage. I don't think a field with "Easy", "Moderate", "Hard", "Don't cry" will help (and we would forget/omit to set it most of the time). I wouldn't want such a field, even limited to bmo. This request should part of a separate request anyway as it would affect all projects on bmo.

Comment 3

[Gervase Markham [:gerv]]

Apart from your "other possible enhancements", where I have concerns about both, sounds like a great plan to me :-)

Gerv

Comment 4

[Frédéric Buclin]

Is this meta bug still needed?

Comment 5

[Max Kanat-Alexander]

Nope, this is fixed! :-) Everything in the plan was done and it worked pretty well.