[Asterisk-Dev] Asterisk Maintenance Crew

[Leif Madsen]

On Sun, 2 Jan 2005 23:59:24 -0500 (EST), russelb at clemson.edu
<russelb at clemson.edu> wrote:
> Hello everyone!

Hi Russell!

> Since the release of Asterisk 1.0, I have been maintaining the stable
> branch of Asterisk, zaptel, and libpri.  I am very excited that I have
> been able to contribute to the project by making stable bug-fix releases
> so that CVS head can be developed more aggressively.  However, since the
> two trees have grown apart so much, I have to do almost every patch by
> hand.  I have been thinking of some ways that this type of maintenance
> work could be done more efficiently.
> 
> I would like to start a development group that will take on various
> maintenance tasks for Asterisk.

Cool!  How can I help?

> The number one job of this group would be to help port bug fixes to the
> stable branch.  Patches that still need to be reviewed for addition to 1.0
> are the ones marked resolved (not yet closed) on the bug tracker.
> 
> Aside from that, there are some other things that this group could do.
> This group could maintain a development to-do list for known issues that
> aren't necessarily bugs, but that could be worked on to improve the
> project.  Some examples of this are converting all modules to use the flag
> macros to reduce memory usage, ensuring the use of the linked list macros,
> or fixing code formatting to conform to the coding guidelines.
> 
> Since there has been a lot of discussion about feature requests lately,
> this group could also maintain a list of feature requests that do not yet
> have patches.  The web site that contains all of this information could
> become the central repository for information on projects that could be
> taken up by people looking for something to do on a rainy day, or for
> those wishing to get into Asterisk development.  It could be a sort of a
> feature request proxy instead of having them directly posted to the bug
> tracker.

I'd be happy to become a bug tracker for this new system.  Basically
I'm interested in helping with all aspects of this new group you are
attempting to form.  I believe this will serve the whole of the
community as this will alleviate the current bug trackers from having
something new to deal with (the ability to submit features which I
feel the current bug trackers want to have happen,  just not in their
current bug tracker), plus it will give a separate place to discuss
this with.  It should be a good place to discuss new things for
Asterisk and to create a to-do list based on community interest.  It
might not be a bad place to post bounties as well.

> A couple more projects for this group could be improving doxygen
> documentation throughout the code and starting an Asterisk developers
> guide in conjunction with the Asterisk documentation project
> (www.asteriskdocs.org).

As one of the more active members of that group, I'd be interested in
tying in Asterisk Docs with this new project.

> I know there are a lot of amateur programmers out there that would like to
> contribute to Asterisk.  I would like to give them that chance.  There is
> a lot of "mundane" programming that is very beneficial to the project that
> would also provide a means of learning about Asterisk development and
> improving programming skills.

To be quite honest, I have been trying to think how *I* could approach
the Asterisk code base to learn it, plus be doing something meaningful
to contribute back.  When I feel useful and that I'm doing something
meaningful I feel more inclined to continue working with it and makes
it more interesting.  I'm sure at least one other person must feel the
same.

> I would like to hear some thoughts about this and how it could best be
> organized.  Thanks for taking the time to consider my thoughts.

I think creating a new website (subdomain off of asterisk.org or
digium.com, how about ft.asterisk.org for Feature Tracker?) which has
software similar to Mantis, or whatever new bug tracking software the
bug marshalls decide on.  I envision a separate website from
bugs.digium.com, but that is somehow tied in with it to give a uniform
feel.  That way bugs which are tracked at bugs.digium.com, once set to
resolved are automatically available on ft.digium.com, ready for
porting to the stable branch.

Plus anything which gets submitted to bugs.digium.com as a feature, or
should be marked as a feature, can be moved over by the bug marshalls
easily to ft.digium.com instead of having to just close the bug and
have the person resubmit it.  Plus bugs can be marked in such a way
that they are not seen by the bug marshalls to make the interface
cleaner for them, but are still existant on the new feature tracker.

Some thoughts of how I see the new system working in my head.  A
system which encourages new "bug marshall", a pleasant, highly
interactive system which *helps* the current bug marshalls.  Sorry I
have no specifics :)

Thanks,
Leif Madsen.
http://www.asteriskdocs.org