Fix a Moodle bug

Let’s fix a Moodle bug!

Moodle HQ invites all developers and community members to be part of the Fix-a-Moodle-bug project in November 2016!

The Fix-a-Moodle-bug project aims to highlight the important contribution that the Moodle community continues to make to our open source project, and to bring attention to our tracker.

For developers

If you are a developer, come and join us to fix bugs. Here is how you can get involved in the project:

1. Look through the list of issues selected for this project. As you can see, only issues affecting 3.1 are included.

2. To formally participate in the project, you have to either:

• send two bug fixes from the Moodle backlog for peer review during November 2016 by following our contribution process. Fixes should be supplied for both 3.1 and master (3.2) branches.
• or send just one fix (also during November) if the bug had over five votes at the beginning of the month.

This project only includes issues that are “bugs”. We will freeze all improvements until mid-December 2016.

The first 100 developers will receive a specially designed “Moodle contributor” t-shirt and a moodle.org badge.

Please note that reviews will take some time and your “Moodle contributor t-shirt” will be sent during January 2017 after peer review and integration are completed.

For community

As a community member, your participation in the Fix-a-Moodle-bug project is very important. Please join us by:

1. Looking through the list of issues associated with this project.

If you would like to promote an issue from tracker that affects you, please make sure that 3.1 is listed as the affected version on it (you can edit the issue or comment on it if you see that 3.1 is missing). Bug fixes in this project will be included in Moodle 3.1 and 3.2.

2. Voting for existing issues.

The more votes your issue has - the closer to the top of the list it will appear.

We would also like to remind everybody how important it is that you search for existing issues before creating new ones. Number of votes is an important criterion that developers look at when selecting issues to be worked on. If somebody creates a duplicate instead of voting on an existing issue it will decrease the priority of the issue.

If you have any questions, please check the Q&A section.

Thanks everyone.

We look forward to your participation in the Fix-a-Moodle-bug project!

Questions and answers

Q: Why is the Fix-a-Moodle-bug project only for issues affecting 3.1?

A: From 14 November 2016, Moodle 3.0 will no longer be supported for general bug fixes (see Releases). If the bug no longer affects the latest release of 3.1 the patches will not be accepted. Moodle 3.2 is scheduled for release on 28 November and all fixes for 3.1 will be included in it.

If you do know that some bug is present on an earlier version but are not sure if it was fixed in 3.1 or not, you can always test it on https://demo.moodle.net. When you confirm that it is still an issue there, please edit the affected versions on the tracker issue by adding 3.1.2 to it. (If you don’t have permission to edit an issue, please leave a comment and the component lead or other developer will edit it for you.)

Q: Why are “Difficult” issues excluded from the participating issues list? Can I still work on the issues not listed?

A: Yes, by all means you can. The reason the query excludes them is because these bugs very often can only be resolved in future major versions. They are borderline between a bug and an improvement.

We also don’t want the list of issues to look too scary for developers.

Issues that are marked as “Difficult” will very likely raise lots of discussions during reviews and there is a likelihood of it not being integrated in line with the Fix-a-Moodle-bug project timeline.

We want to make sure that your hard work as a developer is being recognised in this project through your own specially designed Moodle contributor t-shirt.

Q: I can fix a bug but I can neither assign an issue to me nor see “Request peer review” button.

A: Please see the development process specification. Don’t worry, we will still send you a t-shirt.

Q: How do I know which bugs are already being worked on by somebody else?

A: If there is no assignee on the issue (or assignee is "moodle.com") and there are no comments that somebody started working on it - you can pick this issue for development. Assign it to yourself if you have permission to or just add a comment that you've started working on it. If an issue has an assignee but you suspect that it is not being worked on - look at the issue history, maybe assignee abandoned it long time ago. You can also ask in comments if the development is in actually in progress.

Q: I sent for peer review fixes for two bugs in November, how do I claim my t-shirt?

A: You don’t need to do anything else. Once issues are integrated we will send you an e-mail asking for your t-shirt size and postal address. Thanks for your contributions to Moodle!

Q: More questions?

A: Feel free to ask in the general developer forum.