[wp-hackers] Handling of patches

[Ryan Boren]

On Fri, 2004-09-03 at 21:12 -0500, Adam Keys wrote:
> 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?

Mosquito is the right place.  Michel recently started working on fixing
up XML-RPC.  All of his changes can be seen in CVS.  As far as plans, we
might finish the move to IXR for 1.3.  Nothing is definite yet that I
know of.  I'm sure he'll get around to your patch.  Sometimes we're just
slow and tired.

That said, endlessly waiting for feedback is very frustrating when
you're trying to contribute.  I'll try to flush any plans out into the
open.

The password for the secret cabal is 'Fidelio'.  Don't park on the
street.  ;-)

Ryan