Rails Bugmash 9/26-9/27

Have you ever wanted to contribute back to Rails? Since our first event in August was such a success, RailsBridge and the Rails Core team will run our next BugMash on September 26th and 27th. If you didn’t participate last month, all are welcomed and encouraged to participate.

For those of you unfamiliar with the Bugmash, it’s very similar to the Rails Hackfests that were held in 2007 and 2008. Basically, the idea is to reduce the amount of open tickets in the “Rails Core Issue Tracker:”https://rails.lighthouseapp.com/dashboard, to encourage more people to get involved with the Rails Source, and to have some fun.

We held our first event in August. With over 100 participants, we cleared out 130 tickets.  Even cooler, 35 people had their first-ever patch to Rails accepted. We hope that more people will join in on the fun this time around.

We’ll identify open issues that need help and tag them in Lighthouse, beforehand. During the weekend of the 26th and the 27th, the Rails Core team will be there to incorporate patches and support participants in making the most of their time.

Participants can help in 4 ways:

• Confirm that the bug can be reproduced
• If it can’t be reproduced, try to figure out what information would make it possible to reproduced
• If it can be reproduced, add the missing pieces: better repro instructions, a failing patch, and/or a patch that applies cleanly to the current Rails source
• Bring promising tickets to the attention of the Core team

RailsBridge is organizing both face-to-face and online support for BugMash participants. The plan is to do everything possible to make it easy to start contributing to Rails, and to increase even further the substantial pool of developers who have helped make Rails what it is.

For more details, including a checklist of what you can do to get ready to work in the Rails source and details on a scoring system and rewards for the most active participants, keep an eye on the RailsBridge Wiki.

For now, though, there are few things you can do:

• Reserve at least a chunk of that weekend to roll up your sleeves and work on the BugMash
• Speak up by updating the wiki or posting on the mailing lists ( rubyonrails-core or railsbridge google groups ) if you can contribute prizes, familiarity with the Rails source, or other help to the project.
• Do you know someone or an organization that could supply a prize or sponsor one? Please contact Dan (dpickett at enlightsolutions dot com) if so. While prizes aren’t the focus or the goal, it helps make things fun and competitive.