[Bf-committers] patch tracker

[Dan Eicher]

Three things I've learned about getting patches into trunk:

1) you have to pester people to get them to look at your stuff
2) the bug tracker is the most direct route to trunk since people
actually care about the bug count
3) the patch tracker's main use is somewhere to put code you're pretty
sure will never get into trunk after you give up on #1 and can't frame
as a bug fix

I'm not complaining or anything (having gotten something like 50
patches into trunk) and this doesn't always hold true but seems like a
good general rule of thumb to go by.

Not sure there's any easy fix since module owners have real lives that
force them to disappear for months at a time and the resident BF
coders usually have more important things to deal with (like keeping
the bug count down) than code review even after opening up svn a bit
since people still have to track down a module owner/core dev to look
at their changes.

Anyhoo, just my 2c...and apparent confession to gaming the bug tracker
on occasion.

Dan