On Sep 13, 2009, at 1:38 PM, Rodrigo Rosenfeld Rosas wrote:

> I agree for the usual significative changes. But for the cases where
> small rewrites make the code cleaner without changing Rails  
> behavior, I
> think opening a ticket for each small improvement that won't affect
> nothing but code readability would stress the core developers...

Rails has a well-established policy with several levels of gatekeeping  
for getting code into the project. From my point of view, this is one  
of the reasons for the generally high quality of the code: we can be  
assured that every code change is reviewed and approved by at least  
one core committer who is intimately familiar with Rails. I for one  
would argue strenuously against loosening this policy. Given that  
there have been over 1400 contributors to Rails so far, I think we  
have pretty good evidence that this policy is not too restrictive or  
onerous.

If you think your small changes are real wins for Rails, I urge you to  
follow the established procedures: create a patch, open a Lighthouse  
ticket, lobby for support. If other developers agree with you, your  
changes will have smooth sailing and you'll be able to bask in being a  
core contributor. But part of what we depend on is the established  
principle of "many eyes make all bugs shallow." No one, not even core  
members, just changes the source code without a sanity check.

If you're having trouble getting the tests to run, there are several  
resources you can refer to:

- The "Contributing to Rails" Guide 
http://guides.rails.info/contributing_to_rails.html
- The Pre-flight Checklist put together by RailsBridge 
http://wiki.railsbridge.org/projects/railsbridge/wiki/Pre-flight_Checklist
- The setup notes for the Rails CI server 
http://github.com/rails/rails/blob/e033b5d037c303a34e0c5aec2b38ec6270f00f86/ci/ci_setup_notes.txt
- The Contributing to Rails Railscast 
http://railscasts.com/episodes/113-contributing-to-rails-with-git

If you're still stuck after working through these various guides, you  
could try asking specific questions here or in #rails-contrib on IRC.  
Or you could join us at the next BugMash (September 26) when  
experienced Rails developers and core committers will be available to  
help get you over the initial hurdles towards contributing.

Mike

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