Bugzilla: Getting Started Question

[purplecat]

I'm a really, really new developer (fired up my dreamhack for the first time about an hour ago) and I've been working through the documentation and poking through the code. I've found an unclaimed bug in a babydev bug list which looks like a nice place to start.

My question is should I claim the bug on bugzilla now, or wait until I'm reasonably confident I've found all the relevant bits of code and have a plan for how I'm going to go about fixing it?

Comments

[foxfirefey]

If you claim it and tell us where it is, we could give you pointers on where to find the relevant bits of code!

[purplecat]

Given denise's reply below I shall probably hold off claiming it for a bit, at least until I'm a bit more confident about what I'm doing.

However, the bug in question is 2908. I've found some of the code, but haven't yet drilled down through anything from front end to database, and I'm not quite sure about what the preferred way for storing user preferences like this might be - e.g. is there a preferences table somewhere? should it be controlled via the LJ::is_enabled function? So any pointers to relevant documentation or some code where something similar is done would be helpful!!

[denise]

User preferences are stored with "userprops" -- they're found in bin/upgrading/proplists.dat (and new ones are loaded by update-db.pl, so if you make a change there, be sure to run the update script!) Check htdocs/update.bml (at least I think that's where it is, it might be in a function linked from there somewhere) for the "don't autoformat" option -- that's a "remember last saved value" thing as well and you can compare.

(LJ::is_enabled is for site-wide stuff, not things settable by users -- it's more used for "let's make it possible for site admins to shut off this entire feature if they don't want it on their site".)

[purplecat]

Thanks! I'll take a look around. CLA should be on its way to you.

[denise]

I personally tend to claim the bug after I get some progress made on it, to make sure I won't wind up stalling out, but it's not at all uncommon to have people claim and release bugs on and off -- you aren't committing yourself to HAVE TO patch the bug if you assign it to yourself; there's no shame in dropping a bug you don't want to do anymore. So either way is fine!

Also, have you submitted a CLA yet? :)

[purplecat]

Thanks, I think I'm happier waiting until I feel I've got a concrete handle on what I'm doing before I commit myself.

I submitted a CLA no, because I wasn't 100% sure when I fired everything up that I'd be able to make any sense of it at all! However it doesn't look too scary, so I'll get you a CLA asap.

[yvi]

I prefer people claiming as soon as they think they want to start on a bug - I had at least one situation where I was looking at a bug and looking at code already and didn't claim and then someone else did the "claim while already uploading a patch" thing.

[purplecat]

I promise faithfully to actually claim the bug before I write a single line of code to deal with it. Right now I'm just poking at code and thinking about it and I don't think at the moment that time will be wasted, even if someone does fix the bug from under me.