[OFBiz] Dev - Jira and Community Involvement [was: Jira 174]

[Adrian Crum]

David,

Thanks for the response!

One more motivation to add to your list of reasons why developers work 
on certain portions of OFBiz: skill level. There are things I would like 
to work on in OFBiz, but I'm still not confident I have a thorough 
understanding of all of it.

For instance, the seed data loader enhancement (Jira 191) is something I 
would like to tackle, but I won't - because it involves getting deeper 
into OFBiz than I'm comfortable with.

So, I stick with relatively easy contributions that don't change any 
processing or delve into Java code. The SecurityData.xml work I did in 
the past and the UI refactor I'm doing now don't really change any logic 
- they are just reorganizations of existing files. That's the level of 
involvement that I'm comfortable with right now.

In addition to the voting, I would like to recommend another way to 
speed things up: open up SVN commit access to more people. There are 
very talented developers out there who are responsible enough to be 
given access. Why not lighten the load on the few who have it now?

Regarding Jira 174 in particular - that work was fueled by several 
requests in the mailing lists and you saying that it was work that 
needed to be done, but no one had time to do it. Voting on it would be 
redundant - users and yourself have already expressed that it's needed.

David E. Jones wrote:
> 
> This brings up a good issue... prioritizing efforts in OFBiz.
> 
> Pretty much everyone involved in OFBiz does things on their own time  
> and decides what they want to work on, or does things on an employer's  
> or client's time, and prioritizes the needs and requests of those "what  
> pay for da time."
> 
> I certainly try to handle incoming requests and issues, but at times it  
> is simply more than I as an individual can handle. I really appreciate  
> the help of Jacopo, and sometimes various others on these things, but  
> more is needed...
> 
> With a tool like Jira we really can have more community involvement,  
> and it would help a lot! There are dozens of outstanding issues in  
> Jira, and various other bugs, issues, priorities, etc that are not in  
> Jira. For things that aren't in Jira, we should push submissions there  
> more, and I plan to start entering the things that I would like to work  
> on there, things like:
> 
> - move to CSS-based layout, especially in ecommerce (partially done,  
> but quite a bit left to do)
> - clean up CSS layout and other CSS issues in the manager applications,  
> especially the order manager right now
> - entity extension/override mechanism in Entity Engine entity  
> definition files (can help with customization and more isolated  
> components)
> - conversion of JPublish and JSP/Region pages to use the Screen Widget
> - a simple but full back to front set of example artifacts in the  
> example component, plus narrative about what everything means and what  
> the development process for creating those artifacts might look like
> - address the issue where an un-closed (committed or rolled back)  
> transaction makes threads bad, and never recovers; need some recovery  
> mechanism so that one bad bit of code among the hundreds of events and  
> scripts and such won't bring down an entire server
> - fix bugs and other issues that come up (these constantly do, right  
> now around 5-10 per week typically)
> 
> Some of these are necessary to get resolved ASAP, and some are  
> necessary or at least HIGHLY desirable to get done before the next  
> binary release.
> 
> =========== THE KEY:
> 
> To help with my decisions on priorities for these and other things, I  
> would REALLY appreciate community feedback. This helps the project  
> serve the needs of those who are using it better, and it allows me to  
> step out of the position of being that bad guy that tells people who  
> have invested effort into something: sorry, I won't review it and put  
> it in because in my opinion it is a lower priority than other  
> outstanding issues.
> 
> How to help?
> 
> 1. vote for tasks/issues in Jira that you think are important!
> 2. review submissions and improvements in Jira and comment on them
> 3. if you have a pet-peeve or other issue, submit it as a Jira issue  
> with good detail, and then vote for it
> 
> This will help those that do the final review and commit to feel more  
> comfortable that there are no major issues with the changes and  
> additions, and if there are issues to get them resolved before the  
> final review and commit effort begins.
> 
> If you have an issue that you think is important and no one is looking  
> at it, don't ask me or the other commiters to take care of it, send a  
> message to the users or dev mailing list and ask people to review it  
> and vote for it.
> 
> There have been various discussions about this over time, and I think  
> the project is to the point where not doing things this way is  
> preventing growth and progress...
> 
> I'm very interested in hearing feedback on this, and even MORE  
> interested in seeing feedback and voting going on in Jira.
> 
> Thanks to everyone for all of your help, including you Adrian. I know  
> you have put a lot of effort into this contribution to the project, and  
> I wish I had more time to work on such things and facilitate those  
> improvements in the project.
> 
> -David
> 
> P.S. Once again through pure narcissism I like this post and think it  
> is important for everyone working with OFBiz to read, so I have edited  
> it and added it to my blog at:
> 
> https://www.undersunconsulting.com/ofbizdoc/control/MainBlog? 
> contentContentId=BLOGROOTJONES&currentMenuItemName=BLOGROOTJONES
> 
> 
> On Apr 14, 2005, at 1:28 PM, Adrian Crum wrote:
> 
>> Could we start getting some of the patches committed? They're 
>> starting  to get old enough to cause conflicts with the current SVN.
>>
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>> Dev at lists.ofbiz.org
>> http://lists.ofbiz.org/mailman/listinfo/dev
> 
> 
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