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