[OpenLayers-Dev] release?

[Christopher Schmidt]

On Tue, Feb 24, 2009 at 03:46:23PM +0100, Ivan Grcic wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> i cant wait for all the patches for strategies to come in the trunk.
> Ill help as much as i can/know so they get in until that date!

Note that *nothing* magically gets into trunk: it gets into trunk
because a trunk committer cares about it. Generally, the less time
someone has to spend on a ticket, the more likely they are to review it
and apply it.

Ways to limit developer time spent on tickets:

 * Keep patches as simple as possible.
 * Keep tickets descriptive and informative. If you have to change a
   core library function, explain that in prose. If you have to write a
   tricky piece of code, mention it and why.
 * Write tests! If there are tests on something, there's an order of
   magnitude higher chance that someone is going to get it into trunk.
 * Demonstrate it in use. IF we can see a change live in a page, we're 
   more likely to understand its value. (Sandboxes exist with this in
   mind.) 
 * Get other users. Although I hate to have people stray from trunk, if
   you can get third parties to review anad explain that they have used
   your code, or read it, that makes review simpler.

The more eyes there are on something, the more likely bugs are to be
spotted. If we can get eyes on more patches, then they are more likely
to be easy to review. Following these steps can help the time a patch
takes to get reviewed by a developer go from hours to minutes -- and
given that practically none of our developers ever have an OpenLayers
hour to spare, this is pretty important. 

Best Regards,
-- 
Christopher Schmidt
MetaCarta