Question to commiters: Applying patches

[Ed Letifov <e....@chello.nl>]

Hello,

  I am sorry to raise this topic and hopefully it will not produce any 
lengthly discussions.

  I don't have a commiter status on this project but I try to contribute 
to it as much as possible. I'd love to do some "real" work, but every 
time I have this intention and go in search for what to do I see people 
already doing something on almost every API required for Geronimo, and 
these people are already way ahead of me in their respective areas. I 
follow every thread on the list, but there is a feeling of "missed 
train" :( I guess I am not the only one who feels this way.

  Still, I did find a nice niche for me - "vanilla" tests. Maybe not so 
attractive as writing an implementation for some JSR, but sometimes 
almost as much challenging. As I understand there is still a goal to 
reach a close to 100% test coverage, so I am doing my best to help 
Geronimo reach this goal. BTW, I think this kind of activity would be a 
nice entry point for all these people who were willing to contribute 
but literally stopped after writing the "hello, my name is.... I would 
like to contribute...." letter .

  Now, to the real point. At the early stages of the project it was 
extremely motivating to see the patches you submit being picked up by 
one of the commiters and applied virtually in a matter of hours. I do 
understand that today it might not be the case, with people literally 
being too busy.

  My question is: is there any way to speed this process up? Is there a 
dedicated commiter who would be willing to process such incoming 
patches (accept, review, react) basically acting as a gateway to people 
who might not be extremely experienced yet in such kind of activity? 
Should someone assume this role? I know I would be willing to do it, 
but as I said I don't have a commiter status yet, and I guess the 
amount of my current involvement does not give me enough "weight" to 
try to get it.

Ed Letifov.

Re: Question to commiters: Applying patches

[James Strachan <ja...@yahoo.co.uk>]

On 6 Dec 2003, at 13:27, Ed Letifov wrote:

> Hello,
>
>  I am sorry to raise this topic and hopefully it will not produce any 
> lengthly discussions.
>
>  I don't have a commiter status on this project but I try to 
> contribute to it as much as possible. I'd love to do some "real" work, 
> but every time I have this intention and go in search for what to do I 
> see people already doing something on almost every API required for 
> Geronimo, and these people are already way ahead of me in their 
> respective areas. I follow every thread on the list, but there is a 
> feeling of "missed train" :( I guess I am not the only one who feels 
> this way.

I hear you - I think its been hard for folks to join in until the basic 
shape & framework of Geronimo settled down. Now that most of the basics 
are there in terms of the overall architecture it should be much easier 
for folks to grok what Geronimo is and to add new features or refactor 
implementations to make them much better, faster or more useful.


>  Still, I did find a nice niche for me - "vanilla" tests. Maybe not so 
> attractive as writing an implementation for some JSR, but sometimes 
> almost as much challenging. As I understand there is still a goal to 
> reach a close to 100% test coverage, so I am doing my best to help 
> Geronimo reach this goal.

Great - keep up the good work - we need all the help we can get getting 
Geronimo completely tested & production ready.


>  BTW, I think this kind of activity would be a nice entry point for 
> all these people who were willing to contribute but literally stopped 
> after writing the "hello, my name is.... I would like to 
> contribute...." letter .

Agreed.

>  Now, to the real point. At the early stages of the project it was 
> extremely motivating to see the patches you submit being picked up by 
> one of the commiters and applied virtually in a matter of hours. I do 
> understand that today it might not be the case, with people literally 
> being too busy.

As Alan said; folks have been crazy busy lately to get to PetStore 
level; though expect patches to be applied more quickly from now on. 
Its good to nag the committers from time to time.


>  My question is: is there any way to speed this process up? Is there a 
> dedicated commiter who would be willing to process such incoming 
> patches (accept, review, react) basically acting as a gateway to 
> people who might not be extremely experienced yet in such kind of 
> activity? Should someone assume this role? I know I would be willing 
> to do it, but as I said I don't have a commiter status yet, and I 
> guess the amount of my current involvement does not give me enough 
> "weight" to try to get it.

Its the responsibility of all committers to review patches & react & 
apply good patches. If folks haven't applied your patch just send a 
mail to draw folks attention to it. Hopefully we'll get a few more 
committers soon - so please keep those patches coming

James
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