Drupal itch of the week: Help get GMap and Location modules stable

Earlier today, I asked the fine folks from the Chicago Technology Cooperative what the status is of GMap and Location in terms of a Drupal 6 port. I expected at best a brief reply, probably followed by a "buzz off." ;)

Instead, Brandon Bergren and Rebecca White decided to join #drupal-dojo and spoke at length about the current status of the modules, what's needed to get them stable, and what the roadmap to Drupal 6 is. And, most importantly, they also went into details about how we can help (coders and non-coders alike! :)).

A summary of the talk (as well as the full IRC log) are posted at groups.drupal.org at The State of Geospatial in Drupal. The general plan is to get stable releases of the 5.x modules out first, then do straight ports to Drupal 6, followed by new development.

Want to help speed things along? Here's a list of the places to jump in if getting these modules stable is an itch for you, too.

1. Do you have old, crusty 4.6/4.7 Drupal sites kicking around with Location/GMap data? If so, follow the instructions for sending a copy of your (anonymized) data to Brandon so that he can get the upgrade path working nice and smooth.
2. Are you familiar with Location 1 and 2 and what features they offer? If so, you can help by posting an issue that itemizes functionality that is currently missing from Location 3.
3. Are you really good at breaking things? If so, grab a copy of Location 5.x-3.x-dev and GMap 5.x-1.x-dev and start hammering.
4. Have a boring job or spend a lot of time on the phone? Issue queue clean-up is a fun, relaxing way to pass the time. Go through the GMap/Location issues and mark duplicate bugs/feature requests, test bugs to see if they're still a problem in the latest release and respond with your findings.
5. Like discovering things and telling other people about them? Almost all of the *.txt files in Location and GMap need a serious revamp.
6. Do you have PHP/patch testing chops? Work on some of the known bugs or patches in the queue.

Remember, each item on this list that someone other than Brandon and Rebecca handles means more time that they can spend getting GMap/Location stable and then porting them to Drupal 6. :) See you on the issue queue!