[drupal-support] CVS Procedures and Protocols

[puregin]

On 8 Aug 2005, at 10:10 AM, Gunther Herzog wrote:

> Hello Group,
>
>   I am a long-time programmer (Apache/PHP/MySQL
>   and quite a few others, since before there was
>   such a thing as Windows, or even MS-DOS).

Hi Gunther,

     welcome to the community.   Glad you're
able to contribute your skills and experience.

>
>   That said, I'm a newbie. I've been working with
>   Drupal for just over a week, and though I am no
>   stranger to working in a group, with version
>   control, it has all been in corporate
>   environments, and using Windows-based control
>   systems like StarTeam and Microsoft Visual
>   SourceSafe.
>
>   I've already found and fixed several bugs I've
>   uncovered in assorted modules I've installed,
>   and so my questions:
>
>   1) What is the shortest learning curve to
>   submitting a patch? I do have CVS-NT and
>   Tortoise (though the latter is not installed
>   yet). System is Win2K Pro.

       There is documentation addressing this
at

      http://drupal.org/repos

      Have a look at CVS concepts, then CVS GUIs and
clients for background specific to your situation.

>
>   2) Since I want to work with something
>   resembling production-quality, I'm on 4.6.2, not
>   CVS, though some of the modules I've patched are
>   CVS because they aren't available for 4.6.2 --
>   how are all these related? Are there functions
>   and features in Core CVS that the CVS modules
>   rely on?

       If you are interested in developing new features,
or fixes which will persist into the next release,
you should be developing against CVS HEAD.  There
will likely be no changes to released branches
except to implement security fixes.

>
>   3) What is the most accepted protocol for
>   updating another author's module(s)? Email the
>   author directly first? Report a bug but don't
>   mention the patch unless there is a long wait
>   for issue resolution?


     Have a look at http://drupal.org/support
for some background:

      The first step would generally be to search to
find out if the issue is already being addressed.

     Search the project issues (http://drupal.org/project/issues)

      Next, if the module is actively being maintained,
you can probably contact the author via one of the following:

    *)  her/his contact page on Drupal.org,

    *)  post a topic in the  appropriate forums 
(http://Drupal.org/forum).

    *) join the Drupal IRC at #drupal-support on the FreeNode IRC 
network (irc.freenode.net).

    *) join the drupal-devel mailing list 
(http://drupal.org/mailing-lists)

     Finally, if necessary, contribute a patch via the Project tracker
(http://drupal.org/project/issues).    Convince other people to
test and review your patch.

     Hope this helps -

     Best regards, Djun