[wp-hackers] Handling of patches

[Adam Keys]

My experience of submitting a patch to WordPress was not very good.  
I'd like to get a conversation going to figure out what went wrong.

The story starts with me writing a patch so I can upload files via Ecto.

I inquired on #wordpress as to where I should submit my patch.  I was 
told to submit it to the bugtracker, which I did on 8/4/2004 (#211).  
I'd made sure that this functionality was not yet in CVS.  I also took 
care to leave a concise description of what the patch accomplishes.

And then I waited.

Nothing much happened with the patch, but I kept using it happily.

Last week, Matt mentioned the development activities for the next 
release of WP and I was a little surprised to find that work was being 
done with XML-RPC, the area of my patch.  I left a comment on Matt's 
post, but didn't see any kind of response.

At this point I decided to send a note to the mailing list regarding 
the work on XML-RPC, and again mentioned my patch.  While I *did* find 
out more about what's going on with XML-RPC, there was still no mention 
of my patch.

Now, I understand if my patch sucks or if other work has already made 
it unnecessary.  My main beef is the lack of communication.  I'm very 
discouraged about working on anything else in WordPress.

Now the easy grassy knoll theory is that there is an Inner WordPress 
Cabal.  This is fine, so long as I can at least *read* the proceedings 
:)  Most likely, I submitted the patch in the wrong place and didn't 
hype it enough.

Either way, I would hate for someone else to go through this.  So where 
did I go wrong and what can the WordPress community do to fix it?

Thanks for your attention,
--
~akk
http://therealadam.com