Hey all.
In light of recent discussions on this list about using branches and
not commit broken code, I'd like to ask for some advice.
Firstly, a little on me. I'm an amateur programmer, and more than a
bit rubbish at times (despite PHP being my strongest language). I've
submitted a number of patches to Bugzilla, prodded people on IRC, etc.
and they've been reviewed and accepted with minor changes. They've all
been small, easily readable patches for "paper cut" bugs so far.
More recently, I've been having a prod at some of the page protection
code. My goal currently is to make it possible to overlay different
editing restrictions e.g. to make it possible to have a temporary
"surge" in protection to +sysop without touching the underlying
+autoconfirmed. I've been having some success with the basic
operations, although it has required an additional pr_id column to be
added to page_restrictions and a couple of key changes. Obviously my
code would need substantial review when I'm done, particularly to
consider the many odd cases that come up when you've got 10 million
visitors and not just 1.
So, two questions:
* Should I write up my proposed changes for people to comment on? If
so, where? How should I publicise it? What sort of things should I
mention?
* Am I in danger of essentially creating one large patch which then
has to be commited all in one go? Should I try to avoid this? How?
Thanks all and apologies for some many questions,
Harry (User:Jarry1250)