ADD-ON MAINTENANCE PROCEDURES & YOU

TomTester

I've read useful and important fixes (*) for existing add-ons written by 'non-owners'
(thanks Dino, Wall, Jazz, Mark, etc etc)

These patches are then left for the 'owner' (original coder) to apply/fix/take into
consideration and disappear from sight within days. Some add-ons however have
been 'abandoned' or their 'owner' is too busy with work/life to update them (#).

Perhaps we can come up with a process/procedure for hotfixing existing add-ons,
e.g. define who can make changes, who approves it, when it may be uploaded
and how we can requests/assigns ownership...?!?

I'd love to see ONE official discussion per add-on to discuss and post the latest
bugs & solutions. Ideally linked to the official add-on downloads (and visible in
the settings tab for the admin) I know some add-ons do, but 'normalizing' this
would be very beneficial IMHO.

TT

(*) e.g. http://lussumo.com/community/discussion/4353/security-issue-with-ajaxquote/#Item_0
(#) e.g. BBInsertbar, Better BBCode etc

Pol

I think more people should make their add-ons' licensing clearer. Many do not have a copyright statement at all. Mine are explicitly GPL. If people did that, then anyone could simply fork an extension and add their own fixes/improvements.

Minisweeper

I think the issue is not really whether people are allowed to fork extensions (generally i dont think the owner would mind), the issue is what process to go through if you wish to do such a thing. We dont want tons of duplicates floating round the addons site just because people have made minor revisions. I suppose ideally the addon site needs 'owner' and 'contributer' values for each addon and the contributor can change certain things. Obviously the contributors would have to be trusted and ideally chosen by either the owner or an admin of some kind (i've got no problems with doing that if it's deemed necessary). Whatever happens it'd probably need some upgrades to the addon site which means it's down to Mark finding some free time which is fairly valuable stuff. Perhaps it aught to go on the list of possible upgrades though...

MySchizoBuddy

put all the extensions in the svn repository and let people work on it. submit patches and the original owner can just check it that u didn't mess it up and just commit those changes. just like Drupal Issues page
u need a complete bug tracking and patch system.

Dinoboff

A bug tracking and an api for checking update would be great. For a start, we could help Mark by writing the Bug class, the BugManager Class, the api and and extend the "Updates & Reminders" page in Vanilla.

MySchizoBuddy

Dinoboff don't we already have bug tracking system called Trac.
why can't we use that

TomTester

Schiz, link to trac above links to zupload.com, which zonealarm blocks as a spysite and siteadvisor red-flags...
this should have been a whisper, sorry

Dinoboff

I don't want a lussumo standalone bugtracker.
Just, we could have something integrated to the extension page and the forum; when you submit a bug report on the extension it create a discussion and on the extension page, under rate it for example, you would have the list of unfixed bugs.

MySchizoBuddy

Dinoboff just filing bugs is not enough someone has to fix em and commit patches.

Dinoboff

yeah, that what we are looking for when we open a discussion about a bug in an addon, get a fix or get the attention of the addon creator.
This will just track the discussion on an addon.

That's useful for someone who come for a bug that already have been reported (but the fix hasn't been added to the extension) and the creator of the addon who could miss a discussion on his addon.

TomTester

I know uploaded add-ons have links to the owner/creator site, but I really would like a FIXED link to a discussion thread (on the add-on level, NOT the add-on version level, so one link for add-on v 1.1 and v 2.0)

EDIT: so I think the add-on download site should incorporate a thread per add-on mechanism, or some sort of moderation would assign a link to these forums for every uploaded add-on

jimw

Maybe just add a category like "status". Then you could have bug, bugfix, update, revision, etc.

Mark

Until I can get to fixing up the add-ons site, I've granted Minisweeper admin priviledges on the add-on site. So, he can upload any new changes and update the version numbers on all add-ons.