General developer forum

[Annoyingly while in this freeze period..] I've had a chance to look at some issues which some of our users have wanted recevently & i've submitted a small barrage of patches..

This has raised a few issues in my head, to try and be a good patch submitter:

• Is it best to hold off on submitting the patches whilst you're in freeze?
• Is there a way which CFG globals should be handled - there have been a few occasions in the above patches where i'd wanted to add a global variable - but I can't find anywhere where you should say 'here is my proposal for an additional global variable'
•  Similarly is there any documentation i've missed of where certain functions should go i.e. a utility function which only really has scope within another function..
  
• When making an trivial 'improvement' is it better to add a configuration option to turn this on/off - hence keeping previous behaviour. Or is there a place for changes in default behaviour for the better (but different) http://tracker.moodle.org/browse/MDL-6820 is what i'm thinking of.
  

Obviously all of these can be addresseed by the developers when they get the patch - but i'd like to be a happy helpful patch provider to work in a way that aids developers.