Agenda for Feb 25th 2010 dev chat
- Sprint status
- Woo Menus update
- Merge update
- Schedule update
- Multi-site configuration implementation. Peter (http://wpdevel.wordpress.com/2010/02/18/suggest-agenda-items-for-feb-25th-2010-d/comment-page-1/#comment-5060)
Elio 10:45 pm on February 24, 2010 Permalink
As cool as the Menu Management is, its look and feel is unconsistent with the rest of the WordPress admin interface. I’ve designed some drafts to enhance it following the “guidelines” of the rest of the back-end interface.
Jane Wells 4:59 pm on February 25, 2010 Permalink
Your example follows the UI model of list pages, but menus are not the same, they’re more like widget sidebars. I would not approve going in this direction. That said, we do need to do some work to make everything consistent in the UI.
BjornW 12:06 pm on February 25, 2010 Permalink
I hope this is the appropriate venue for this.
I would like to bring two things to your attention for the developers chat:
1) Errors and how to deal with them. Specifically in context with comments. See this thread: http://lists.automattic.com/pipermail/wp-hackers/2010-February/030522.html
2) Clear guidelines on how the WordPress community deals with external patches see this recent thread: http://lists.automattic.com/pipermail/wp-hackers/2010-February/030224.html
I hope these items can be discussed and are out on the agenda.
Jane Wells 5:52 pm on February 25, 2010 Permalink
This comment was left too late to make this week’s agenda, but I just looked at the threads you reference. The first, about the comment errors, is best discussed on the trac ticket. The second is a common complaint: “Why hasn’t my patch been reviewed/commented on/committed by the core team yet?” which has been answered a hundred times. First, that’s not an external patch, we don’t really have anything considered external. Second, If a patch is submitted on a low-priority ticket, then it will be looked at after higher-priority tickets are handled. To get more attention on a patch, a submitter should ask people on wp-hackers to review the patch and leave feedback, conduct tests, etc. Ditto in the #wordpress-dev irc channel. If a patch has community traction and has been well-tested, it is easier for committers to make a decision than if they have to stop what they are working on to do a lot of testing themselves.
BjornW 9:33 am on February 26, 2010 Permalink
Hi Jane,
Thanks for taking the time to look into this and for your reply.
Regarding the errors and commentform: I’ll continue to gather more information about errors in WordPress and how to deal with by starting a discussion on Trac and see how this goes.
As for the patching process: You mention that this particular question has been answered ‘a hundred times’ yet no change has been made. If a question on the patching process keeps raised again and again you might wonder about the clarity and methodology of the current process? Personally I’m not very motivated in providing patches as long as I have to beg and plea among the committers[1] before one of them will have a look at it. Although I completely understand that the current team of committers has limited resources and thus it might take some time before a patch may be looked at, the current process as described by you is in my opinion demotivating and creates an artificial barrier for people to participate in the development process of WordPress.
I would strongly suggest to change the current patching process so we all can benefit more from ‘opportunistic’[2] developers providing ‘drive-by’ patches. I’m pretty sure we – the WordPress community – could learn a lot from other big projects by looking at how they have organized this process. Personally I’m looking at the Apache Foundation and how they manage their community. Perhaps this would be a good starting point for the WordPress Foundation?
[1] I’m not sure there is even a list of the core committers (such as http://couchdb.apache.org/community/committers.html) or is there?
[2] See the recent posts by Jono Bacon (Ubuntu community manager) http://www.jonobacon.org/category/opportunistic-developers/
Looking forward to your reply,
Jane Wells 11:49 am on March 1, 2010 Permalink
We have recently added several developers to the list of people with commit access. The lead developers and those with commit access are listed in the sidebar of the About page on wordpress.org.