[TYPO3-dev] Contribution to community extensions

[Jigal van Hemert]

Hi,

On 16-8-2014 10:15, Xavier Perseguers wrote:
> 1) Report problems in the extension's bug tracker

Forge is quite okay for this. Some prefer Jira (Neos/Flow project). So 
far I found that Mantis, Redmine, Jira and many others are fine for 
reporting issues. Connections with other systems (Gerrit for example) 
and other features might give on of them an advantage.

> 3) Fix bugs, provide correction to the author and get it packed in a new
> release

If there is a system (git + gerrit for example) available that allows 
one to contribute that makes it somewhat easier. In other cases a diff 
with a patch can also be used.

> 1) Some extensions are using Git/Gerrit so that workflow is same as
> TYPO3 Core, from my point of view, this is cool because it prevents wild
> forks while keeping the same (known) workflow as when contributing to
> the Core but getting up to speed may be difficult for non-developers.

Well, any suggestion, a few lines of corrected code, a patch file they 
all can help solve a problem. You can only encourage people to use a 
certain method, but in the end a community extension (unpaid code) means 
that neither party can demand anything from the other.

> 2) Some extensions are still using Subversion (on Forge) and
> contributing with attached patches is old-fashioned but works if author
> is active and quick to answer/tackle the issue

There is a script available to convert SVN repositories into Git which 
also keeps history information. We could offer extension authors which 
use SVN to 'upgrade' them to Git. Maybe there are people willing to help 
with that and the authors can always be notified in batches to spread 
out the work.

> 4) Some extensions are now continuously developed on GitHub (or similar
> platforms) and authors are not really releasing anything anymore on TER,
> or - similar problem - the extension is forked many times and nobody
> (from the outside) can easily say which fork is "the best to take".

The main reasons for using Github seem to be:
- easy forking + creating pull requests
- the extra tools like travis which are not available inside the TYPO3 
environment
- more people have github a account

The disadvantages currently outweigh the advantages IMO:

- easy forking, which creates a lot of versions of the same extension
- impossible to correct the code in a pull request before merging it 
(other than by the author of the pull request)
- doesn't work with a t3o account (= contributor / dev needs more 
accounts to work on a single issue)
- no connection to a TYPO3 bug tracker
- no control over code by security team

Can we somehow make it easier to contribute with the current tools? 
Changing the toolset also means a lot of effort for people who are 
already busy maintaining the system.

-- 
Jigal van Hemert
TYPO3 CMS Active Contributor

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