Thanks Daniel, Michael, Moshe. It seems like a combination of working through the issue queues and using a step-through debugger is probably the best way to proceed.

For the record I'm going to try http://robshouse.net/article/xdebug-komodo-and-acquia-drupal-stack-installer. I'm going to use it with XAMPP rather than the Acquia DAMP stack through (I can't actually get Acquia DAMP to install on my Mac - see http://acquia.com/node/911603 - any tips?). Does the Acquia stack have any particular advantages?

Thanks once more, I'm off to set up a debugger. Wish me luck!

2009/10/12 Daniel F. Kudwien <news@unleashedmind.com>
If you think you are prepared to roll some patches, then *now* is the right
time to immediately start:


Critical API clean-ups for Drupal 7:

http://drupal.org/project/issues/search/drupal?status[]=Open&issue_tags=D7+A
PI+clean-up


The ~10 exceptions for Drupal 7:

http://drupal.org/project/issues/search/drupal?issue_tags=Exception%20code%2
0freeze


General list of nice to have Drupal core API clean-ups:

http://drupal.org/project/issues/search/drupal?status[]=Open&version[]=7.x&i
ssue_tags=API+clean-up


We have like 4 days to get all of those ready and make D7 really shine.


If you can roll patches, but don't know that much about Drupal core yet:

http://drupal.org/project/issues/search/drupal?issue_tags=Novice


Welcome to the club! :)


Thanks,
sun