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Review Proposed Guidelines for Contributed Code

Details

  • Type: Task Task
  • Status: Closed Closed
  • Priority: Major Major
  • Resolution: Fixed
  • Component/s: docs.moodle.org
  • Labels:
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Description

Attached is a DRAFT of the proposed guidelines for contributed code. It is based on my experience over the past coupld of months of working with CONTRIB code. My hope is that this will be added to the documentation so that when questions come up about how folks can contribute that we can point to this as a guideline. Please let me know any questions, comments, etc. that you have. My hope is that this will help to develop future Moodle developers, help folks share their code, and provide clarity for maintaining contributed code. Peace - Anthony

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Anthony Borrow added a comment -

I've added Helen as a watcher.

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Anthony Borrow added a comment - I've added Helen as a watcher.
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Martín Langhoff added a comment -

Great document. My only thing is that – unless someone makes it so – Eclipse is not the recommended platform, and only 2 of the core devs use it, AFAIK (Petr & Tim).

I rather tell people about important practices – like

  • tailing the apache and mysql/pg logs with debug cranked up (and fixing any issues that appear there!)
  • diff before you commit, and commit only the minimal changes you mean to commit
  • use various browsers to test several accounts/roles at the same time

In small-medium screens, a big IDE like Eclipse actually gets in the way, and does not leave screen real state, or RAM, for those things.

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Martín Langhoff added a comment - Great document. My only thing is that – unless someone makes it so – Eclipse is not the recommended platform, and only 2 of the core devs use it, AFAIK (Petr & Tim). I rather tell people about important practices – like
  • tailing the apache and mysql/pg logs with debug cranked up (and fixing any issues that appear there!)
  • diff before you commit, and commit only the minimal changes you mean to commit
  • use various browsers to test several accounts/roles at the same time
In small-medium screens, a big IDE like Eclipse actually gets in the way, and does not leave screen real state, or RAM, for those things.
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Helen Foster added a comment -

Excellent work Anthony, thanks a lot.

Please add it to the documentation wiki so I can edit the paragraph on learning to provide documentation

http://docs.moodle.org/en/Development:Guidelines_for_contributed_code (or similar title)

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Helen Foster added a comment - Excellent work Anthony, thanks a lot. Please add it to the documentation wiki so I can edit the paragraph on learning to provide documentation http://docs.moodle.org/en/Development:Guidelines_for_contributed_code (or similar title)
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Tim Hunt added a comment -

Yes good.

I agree, take out the Eclipse reference. We should make sure the CVS for developers page tells people about various good CVS tools.

The only other suggestion is to add some examples for each section. So links to browse the code of a small plugin with a few revisions on cvs.moodle.org; link to the list of bugs in the tracker for one contrib module with a few nice bug reports; etc.

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Tim Hunt added a comment - Yes good. I agree, take out the Eclipse reference. We should make sure the CVS for developers page tells people about various good CVS tools. The only other suggestion is to add some examples for each section. So links to browse the code of a small plugin with a few revisions on cvs.moodle.org; link to the list of bugs in the tracker for one contrib module with a few nice bug reports; etc.
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Anthony Borrow added a comment -

Martín, Helen, and Tim - Thanks for the great feedback. I have modified the section on Eclipse and made it an example of an IDE that works nicely with CVS. We can work on developing the other pages like good coding practices, lists of other IDEs, and details of how to file bugs. The real purpose of this page is to outline/document the procedure that will be use for contributed code so that folks know the procedure and understand what will be expected when they share code. I have added a slightly modified version to:

http://docs.moodle.org/en/Development:Guidelines_for_contributed_code

Helen - It may be helpful to modify http://docs.moodle.org/en/Development#How_you_can_contribute so that it refers to this newly created page. I want to avoid the impression that once someone writes code that all they are hoped to do is complete a Modules and Plugins. This is still possible; however, I want to encourage folks to go further in the contributions. For small things folks may want to host it. I just want folks to know that Moodle offers them a whole range of options to help share, promote, discuss, and develop their code. Peace - Anthony

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Anthony Borrow added a comment - Martín, Helen, and Tim - Thanks for the great feedback. I have modified the section on Eclipse and made it an example of an IDE that works nicely with CVS. We can work on developing the other pages like good coding practices, lists of other IDEs, and details of how to file bugs. The real purpose of this page is to outline/document the procedure that will be use for contributed code so that folks know the procedure and understand what will be expected when they share code. I have added a slightly modified version to: http://docs.moodle.org/en/Development:Guidelines_for_contributed_code Helen - It may be helpful to modify http://docs.moodle.org/en/Development#How_you_can_contribute so that it refers to this newly created page. I want to avoid the impression that once someone writes code that all they are hoped to do is complete a Modules and Plugins. This is still possible; however, I want to encourage folks to go further in the contributions. For small things folks may want to host it. I just want folks to know that Moodle offers them a whole range of options to help share, promote, discuss, and develop their code. Peace - Anthony
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Anthony Borrow added a comment -

MD - I'm resolving since we have the Guidelines for CONTRIB available now in docs. Thanks for the feedback and support in pulling it together. Peace - Anthony

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Anthony Borrow added a comment - MD - I'm resolving since we have the Guidelines for CONTRIB available now in docs. Thanks for the feedback and support in pulling it together. Peace - Anthony
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Helen Foster added a comment -

Thanks Anthony, great work

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Helen Foster added a comment - Thanks Anthony, great work

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