Help test 5.x core (and project*) on scratch.drupal.org -- become a project ninja!

the Drupal Dojo sounds great, and i'm happy to join the efforts (as both student and teacher, it's a whole spectrum, not a bit). anyone who wants to dive into Drupal development right now can help by mercilessly beating on http://scratch.drupal.org to test out the latest 5.x release candidate code, and submitting issues (with patches, if possible!) about any problems you find.

i'm particularly interested in people testing out the project* set of modules (the biggest set of code running on the [s].d.o infrastructure that isn't Drupal core itself). this code is essential for all Drupal development, but is a huge, and (unfortunately) fairly complex chunk of code, which is mostly maintained entirely by one person: me. since it's not core, the pool of people testing it (aside from live use on drupal.org) and contributing code and documentation for it is tiny. if the Dojo wants to really do some good in the Drupal world (and it seems like it certainly will!), one of its big goals should be expanding the pool of people who understand, test, contribute patches to, and eventually help commit code and fully maintain the project suite of modules.

here are some of the many ways you can help:

• read these 2 issues about testing on http://scratch.drupal.org
  • 5.0 release candidate now running on scratch.drupal.org (http://drupal.org/node/105004)
  • Testing the 5.0 port of the release system on scratch.drupal.org (http://drupal.org/node/105016)

  both of those pages include detailed instructions on where to report any bugs or problems you find.

• join the New Release System group.
• figure out how to install your own local test site running 5.x Drupal core and the latest versions of the
  Project, Project issue tracker, CVS management/tracker modules. document as you go and make some handbook pages about them on drupal.org... ;) see http://drupal.org/node/87175 for an issue about doing this in the project issue queue.
• check out the issue queues for the "HEAD" or "5.x-0.x-dev" versions of the following modules:
  • Project
  • Project issue tracking
  • CVS managment/tracker

  see if you can reproduce any of the bugs on a local test site. start digging into the code and see if you can figure out anything about what's going wrong, or how you might implement a new feature.

• check out the list of Future work (http://groups.drupal.org/node/1830) for the new release system, and see if any of it interests you to start working on a patch for something. if so, followup to the issue, assign it to yourself, and start sketching out your thoughts on what needs to happen. feel free to just ask questions in the issue queue about implementation details

i'll try to start hanging out in #drupal-dojo whenever i'm in #drupal. i might sometimes come across a little scary, but i'm *always* thrilled for anyone who wants to help with project*, cvs.module, etc.... i can be very nice and helpful when i want to be. ;)

looking forward to a productive collaboration... huge thanks to josh for getting this group started!!!

-derek (dww)