Scooter Morris wrote:
>
> All,
> We've been anxiously awaiting the acceptance of the patches for
> the X-Sender functionality into the tree, but this still hasn't
> happened. The patches were submitted on 12/12/2000. Can somebody
> explain what needs to be done to get these included? Here is the
> bug: Would like X-Sender functionality similar to Communicator 4.7
The process for getting a patch approved can be a little frustrating,
and in my (limited) experience a patch is extremely unlikely to be
approved unless someone, somewhere, is going out and actively pushing
for it to be accepted. One thing you can do for mozilla even if you
don't have any coding experience is attempt to help push the patch
through this process.
This is _my experience only_ of how to do this. It may not be the view
of anybody else; I suggest asking around on IRC to get a couple of
different viewpoints before you even start. The first thing to do is to
try to find some people responsible for the area of code that the patch
changes. http://lxr.mozilla.org/ is very useful for this as it can
produce a "blame log" of the last people to touch each line of code.
It's also worth asking on IRC if you aren't sure (irc.mozilla.org,
channel #mozillazine or #mozilla).
When you've found some relevant people, add them to the "cc" list of the
bug and add a note asking for reviews (which, when they are done, the
person will indicate by r=whoever in the bug). If nobody answers after a
while, try asking on IRC if anybody who knows your section of the code
might want to review the patch. If any reviews are done, someone may
need to update the patch to reflect suggestions by the reviewer. If you
can't figure out how to do this yourself and the original person who
wrote the patch isn't willing to do it, you may have to search out
somebody else to help you here.
After getting an r= tag in the bug, you'll need to find someone to do
what's known as a "super-review" - this review targets architecture
issues in the patch and how well it integrates into mozilla as a whole.
http://www.mozilla.org/hacking/code-review-faq.html has more information
on this, including a link to a document which has people who might do a
super-review broken down by area of expertise. Follow the same procedure
for sr= as you did above for r=.
Once you have an r= and an sr= in the bug, the patch can be checked in.
Since you don't have permission to do this yourself, you can, again, ask
in the bug or ask around on IRC for someone to do this for you.
Of course, if you're lucky, the person who owns the bug will pick it up
at an early stage of your pestering and drive it from there, and you
won't have to worry about all these steps (sometimes bugs just get
forgotten...).
In theory, the r=/sr= process can be very quick. For the one bug I ever
went through this process for, though, it took about a month (much of
that was because I didn't want to pester people so I just waited - I
suggest poking people again if you don't get an answer in a couple of
days for any step).
Chances are, you won't be able to get this in for 0.9.2 because the tree
is already well and truly frozen for that at this point (if you want to,
you should email [EMAIL PROTECTED] asking for approval (a=) to get it
in - be prepared to argue why it's so vital, and also to be turned
down). If you don't get the a= for 0.9.2, I think you will need to wait
a couple of days until the 0.9.3 tree is opened up (but actually that's
likely to have happened anyway by the time you get the r/sr, and 0.9.2
will be a moot point because it will already be out).
Sorry if this isn't the answer you were looking for ("it'll be in on
XX/YY/2001") but if you really care about this bug, you may be able to
actually help rather than just waiting and hoping that somebody else
cares too.
Stuart.
