On Mon, 8 Oct 2012, Ethan Jucovy wrote:

Does t.e.o have a keyword for these kinds of tickets? As a non-core-developer I'd like to help out and also get more familiar with the core codebase, and little bugs that aren't worth a core dev's time to fix sound like they might be good tickets to start on. Or maybe moving them into a special milestone would make it clear that no core dev is likely to look at these, and also make them easy for someone like me to find?

If you want to contribute (here or somewhere else), a short note about how to start (Target audience: Not only you :-)

a) Find something you want fixed/changed 'yourself'.

b) Read code and think a bit about how you would solve it.

c) Check whether there is already a report for it and maybe suggestions
   how to solve the issue.

c1) There is: comment at the relevant ticket with a short text how you
    think you will proceed to give maintainers a chance to guide you to the
    right path when necessary.

c2) There isn't: Either create a ticket or use mailinglist for additional
    guidance.

d) Start implementing.

d1) When necessary ask in mailinglist or ticket for help, but always tell
    what you did and why you did it and where your problems are.

e) Supply a patch

f) Fix the patch according to the requirements of maintainers.

g) Constantly nag until it is applied :-)

You can skip b) to c), but usually it makes f) easier.

One thing which is always important for me. When asking questions, describing strategies: Be short with the texts, but provide all information which may be necessary (the more the better, as long as the main question/suggestion stays short and understandable).

Why: From time to time for our software (don't know for Trac, but probably the same :-) we have tickets describing in great detail how a specific issue should be solved, but there is never any results from such posts. So today I simply ignore long tickets or solution descriptions.

Same for questions. If it takes too long to understand a question I ignore it. So keep the question short, but nevertheless provide the information which may be necessary. Note, that usually you will not know which really is necessary.

An anecdote: Lots of years ago it took me 2 days to create a bug report describing in detail a strange bug. The author of the software had a short look and found the bug in 10 minutes. He said that without that information it would have taken days to find the reason. It was a very small detail which helped him, which I would never have thought relevant at all :-)

If you still don't find anything: #10562 should be easy and you would make one of the users of one of my trac instances happy. :-)

P.S. I get constantly the question when to use mailinglist and when ticket: When there is the slightest chance that information may be relevant for others even if you stop implementing, then add it to the ticket (If necessary repeat it in mailinglist a little bit later). If questions are for your own learning, ask in mailinglist.

Ciao
--
http://www.dstoecker.eu/ (PGP key available)

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