[development] Very concerned over Drupal's core development

[Michael Favia]

Eric Schaefer wrote:
> Why am I not participating in reviews of core patches? Naked fear. How
> could I possibly understand whats going on in core? 
Fire up your debugger (i use eclipse + pdt + zend debugger) and step 
through the major operations of the bootstrap process to discover the 
big picture. Then walk through the loading of a node that is decorated 
with cck fields and taxonomy terms. Finish up your tour with the editing 
of a form (node, admin) to get a good look at fapi and the form 
processing involved in form.inc and you have a VERY strong foundation 
from which to build. Most people involved in core don't understand 100% 
of it. Many specialize in a particular area. This is why we have reviews 
and the testbot.
> One reason for this is the fact that core is a moving target. 
This is a conscious and purposeful decision on the part of the project 
it will not change.

> If I am not understanding the USE of those APIs how can I judge
> patches to the code behind them? 
api.drupal.org lists each function and in the declaration is detailed 
everywhere that function is also used in core. This is a good start but 
your IDE can help you alot more if you use one especially if you put  a 
breakpoint in your function and start debugging to see how various 
functions arrive at the location and what the variables are set to at 
that time.

Please take the time and try it just once. Install D7, apply a couple 
patches, review their changes and you'll be surprised how quickly you 
fall in place. We want your help. I normally find that future 
contributors are simply scared away by the challenge certainly not 
actually unable to rise to it. Pick a patch that seems interesting to 
you. If you ever need help find me in IRC and I'll always be happy to 
lend a hand. -mf