[JBoss-dev] Assigning JIRA tasks to non-committers

[Ovidiu Feodorov]

Sometimes it is probably appropriate to assign a JIRA task to somebody who is not a CVS committer. These are cases in which I find this useful: - Creating a proof of concept or a prototype that most likely won't make it into the main code base in its actual form. - Providing patches that will be ultimately applied by a committer to the code base - Testing functionality and specific configurations. - Provide code examples - Write a wiki documentation page or other type of article None of these tasks require their assignee to have committer access since they don't imply CVS write access. However they would help a project lead to keep track of who is doing what and administer more easily work that is done by non-JBoss volunteers. The current JIRA setup doesn't allow this. In order to enable it, we will need to add a new group to JIRA ("Contributor" or similar) and probably a new task type "Community Task" (Scott's idea).  Personally I don't see the usefulness of the last one, I think the existing "Task" is sufficient. Following the same logic, a "Contributor" can report an (existing type) "Bug" or can suggest an (existing type) "Feature Request" and he can be also assigned to it, pending a patch submission. The patch will be be applied to CVS by a committer, usually the one who assigned the task to the contributor. A project lead should be able to include an user in the project's "Contributor" group. Again, this DOES NOT implies that the user will be granted CVS access. This arrangement could also be a good motivator for volunteers, as they see their contributions publicly recognized and documented. Being a "Contributor" should be prerequisite of becoming a "Committer". Please let me know if you find this useful. Regards, Ovidiu