Thunderbird:PatchLove
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Welcome to the Thunderbird Patch Love wiki!
Help the Thunderbird Mozilla Messaging team give love to patches which have not yet checked in. Our objective is two-fold: get patches approved and checked in, and encourage authors to stay involved in Thunderbird. You will want to provide helpful and gentle advice to patch authors and those in the bug. If the patch author is not available, the next step is to get others involved who can help move the bug and the patch to the next logical step. Common examples of why a patch might be stalled:
- Patch is actually only a draft
- Patch was not set for review
- Reviewer hasn't done the review
- Review has happened, but patch/bug needs revision, clarification, analysis
Giving Patch Love
This is simply a skeleton procedure, a suggested set of steps. Circumstances may be more complex than this simple document can cover. Adjust to circumstances of each bug and your skill level. Use your best judgment, and the assistance of other people involved in the bug to help move it along.
1. Does the bug still exist? (perform normal triage - test, adjust summary, status, etc)
no -> close bug yes -> add status whiteboard [patchlove] and continue
2. Comment to ask if the patch author still available to help, and continue. 3. Does bug need an update/further analysis before fixing?
yes or don't know ->
are you able to provide advice?
yes -> add advice, suggest next steps, etc
no -> add whiteboard [qawanted]
no -> continue
4. Are any patches still potentially valid? I.E. at least one patch does not have strikethrough
no or don't know -> comment & add whiteboard [helpwanted] & commit yes -> continue
5. Does patch have review pending? Such patches will show ...
<requestor>: review? (<requestee>)
yes ->
has requestee (reviewer) commented in the bug about the patch?
no -> politely email a reminder to requestee & add whiteboard [awaiting review]
yes -> suggest possible next steps to patch author, etc
no -> add whiteboard [helpwanted] and comment to author that patch needs review
- cite http://www.mozilla.org/mailnews/review.html and
http://www.mozilla.org/mailnews/review-mail.html
6. If possible, stay engaged in the bug until it has made significant progress - because it may take several days and more than one exchange of information to nudge the bug enough that it is likely to get resolved.
References
Give us feedback
Please post a note in #bugday or #maildev about your experience: problems, questions, ideas to improve this or other documentation, and overall thoughts about Thunderbird. We really appreciate your help today and your feedback is very valuable.
Thanks!
Thanks so much for your help. Your efforts help us to improve Thunderbird. We could never do this without you and the entire volunteer community.