Hit-list for top Drupal 7 module stabilization
Back in September, http://drupalcontribstatus.com/ was launched to track the porting status of the top 60 contributed projects to Drupal 7. Since then, we've whittled the list down to just 20 projects remaining, as well as tons of progress on the rest! YEAH!
I contacted each of the maintainer(s) of those remaining projects and have come up with a list of next steps for each. Your help is needed if we want to get that graph up to 100% by year's end. (Just in time for Drupal 7's first birthday! :))
As a general rule, help is needed in the following areas:
- Issue queue triage (Difficulty: Novice): Going through the issue queues of these modules and doing things like closing duplicate reports, verifying that bug reports are valid, and so on. None of this is particularly difficult work, but time that maintainers have to spend doing it is time they can NOT spend porting their modules to Drupal 7.
- Reviewing patches (Difficulty: Intermediate): Going through the issues in the queue marked "needs review" and making sure patches still apply, then testing to make sure that they still work, then reporting on the results of your testing are all critical things that really help save maintainers time, and ensure that any actionable issues are escalated to their attention.
- Experience in various core sub-systems (Difficulty: Intermediate to Advanced): If you know how to write automated tests, are familiar with how the render API works, can answer questions about the new Field API or File API, there are several issues identified that could use YOUR help! Note that you don't necessarily need to be in MAINTAINERS.txt to provide this help, either; if you've already started building Drupal 7 sites and modules, you likely know enough to be helpful!
- Co-maintainership (Difficulty: Intermediate) Many of these projects are seeking co-maintainers. If you or your business/customers depend on any of these modules, investing solid time in the issue queue to help review and roll patches for issues in need would be of tremendous benefit, and would help position yourself to ask for commit rights so that you can ensure these modules stay solid going forward.
- JavaScript knowledge! (Difficulty: Intermediate to Advanced) Seriously. We are, generally speaking, a bunch of PHP nerds. If you know JavaScript, you can be helpful on a number of different (and important) fronts.
So, without further ado, here are some specifics on how you can help Drupal 7, and the maintainers whose code you rely on!