You know the guy doing the video remove it because it was in rage against us.Okay, so that���s good, but you guys really need to improve the documentation on the mechanical walkthrough of how to actually claim and submit a bug fix.
Today, I happened to have some spare time, so I figured, what the hell, why not see if I can���t fix some bugs blocking the Pharo 4 release. It���s a reach, granted, but I used to be good at Smalltalk, I���m still a good programmer, and I figure at least one of the blockers is in the really-annoying-but-technically-easy bucket that no one was willing to touch yet, so chances are good.
Armed with my old knowledge of how Squeak contrib used to work, I at least got as far as manually downloading a VM, manually downloading a .changes/.image, and manually downloading a .sources. Then I go to pharo.org and���
Well, hmm. No instructions on the submission or development process? Well, no matter, I know you guys use FogBugz, so maybe on the FogBugz wiki? The landing page is unhelpful; clicking on the word ���here��� at ���Reporting or Fixing a Bug?��� takes me to http://pharo.org/get-involved which is a 404. Heading back, I try ���Documentation���, which contains a lot of documentation, but none how to submit fixes.
We were not aware that it was linked them.
We add a description on the old web site but he got lost.Likewise, I can get great info on the workflow of a bug, but not on how to move code through that workflow.
At this point, by luck, I realize that there���s a link to ���Contribute��� in the TOC in FogBugz. Brilliant, exactly what I want! And it has a video walkthrough, no less, which takes me to http://vimeo.com/75183993 and���nope, that���s a 404 again. Thankfully, the link below it appears to let me download a nice MP4, which does walk me through���submitting a slice. I actually have no idea if this is the right way to do things anymore, but given that you guys seem to have a super-active GitHub repo, I kind of doubt it. And while there���s some documentation scattered around about how to use Git and Pharo, it���s not centralized or obvious.
It���s up to the community to be involved with the tools they love and to submit patches, and you���re totally right to remind everyone that it���s up to us to improve Pharo if we want to keep it alive, but it���s up to the core team to make sure that it���s easy for us to do so, and I think that Pharo���s not doing terribly well on that front right now.
Now in a nutshell, to submit a fix
- donwload latest image (there is a script on download)
- do a fix for a giving bug
- publish a slice press (+ slice) in MC, add the dirty packages
- publish it in the inbox (click on inbox and press save)
- take a fresh image.
- reload it and check that it fixes the problem (open MC and click on inbox + open).
Does it help?
Was it so complex?
���Benjamin