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)