[Asterisk-Dev] Asterisk Maintenance Crew

[russelb at CLEMSON.EDU]

> 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 have seen a lot of people ask in #asterisk for a "to-do" list or help
for how to get started with development, but I never had a good answer for
them.  I'm hoping that we can come up with a way to provide an entrance
point for aspiring Asterisk developers.

> 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.
>

If we were to maintain the list of feature requests, I'm not sure it would
need to be that complicated.  I think a page of feature requests could be
simple and wiki-style.  If someone were to want to tackle the
implementation, the discussion could happen on this mailing list.

> 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 :)

I appreciate your input.  Like I said in my original email, my first goal
for this group is to help with maintaining the stable branch by porting
patches.  I also think that there is a lot of potential for recruiting
developers by providing a place with various options of ways to get
started.

In that same spirit, I think having a page full of users' feature requests
would fit right in.

Russell Bryant