Martin Dougiamas

I've been talking about this for a while and it's time to get it rolling!

I'd like to have a bugathon for the next few months to:

- fix as many outstanding Moodle problems as possible
- raise awareness of the tracker and our development processes
- have some fun and give out some prizes!

I've got some details below, but if you have suggestions for additions/alterations let me know here so I can adjust them before the official launch.

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Moodle Bugathon #1 (draft rules)

There will be prizes in various categories. To let us know you're competing (and to be eligible for a prize) you should submit your own name to the Bugathon page in Moodle Docs (not created yet). Developers currently employed by Moodle HQ are not eligible for prizes but will be competing anyway.

I reserve the right to disallow someone if it becomes obvious they are cheating the system (eg by filing fake reports, setting up fake accounts, reassigning bugs from other people after they are done etc)

Note in all this I'm referring to bugs specifically (ie problems that need fixing) and not wider issues like feature requests! (We'll get onto those again once we clean up some of these bugs)

Some general documentation about the tracker.

1. MOST BUGS RESOLVED

The first person to attach a stable patch to a bug in the tracker, or submit a correctly-labelled-and-merged fix to CVS is deemed to be the resolver of a bug. Resolved bugs must be verified by an independent QA tester to be counted.

Points are assigned like this: 5 points for every bug + 1 point for every VOTE on that bug (so everybody vote for your favourite bugs!)

Developers should keep track of the bugs they fix in the Bugathon wiki page (official developers can generate this from the tracker itself, but others will have to maintain it manually).

Prizes:

• #1 Developer: AU$1000 (approx $US940)
• #2 Developer: AU$500
• #3 Developer: AU$250
• Next 5 Developers: Choice of any item from the Moodle Shop
• Any other developer who fixes more bugs than the best-performing Moodle HQ programmer can get something from the Moodle Shop too.
  

2. MOST FIXES VERIFIED

To join the testing group in the tracker, email Michael Blake at support@moodle.com so he can add you.

This allows you to assign yourself as a QA person for any bug. After testing that a "Resolved" bug actually is fixed or works as the developer reported, you should change the status to Closed and make a comment on the bug to say what you saw.

Keep track of the bugs you've verified in the Bugathon wiki page (this is easy to generate from the tracker).

Prizes:

• First prize: AU$250
  
• Second prize: AU$100
• Third prize: Choice of any item from the Moodle Shop

3. MOST DUPLICATES IDENTIFIED

If you find a bug that is the same as another bug (read them very carefully to make sure because sometimes this is deceptive) then create a new link between the two bugs marking the later one as a DUPLICATE. If you can, close the later bug too.

You'll need to keep a list of your duplicate bugs in the wiki to collect the prize (there is not a way to generate this info from the tracker, unfortunately).

Prizes:

• First prize: AU$250
  
• Second prize: AU$100
• Third prize: Choice of any item from the Moodle Shop

4. MOST NEW BUGS FILED

New bugs are always welcome. Some people in our community are very good at finding them too, so this category is for them. Obviously bugs should be real fixable problems, and should not be duplicates of others already filed. All new bugs should contain full steps to reproduce the problem.

Keep track of the bugs you've filed in the Bugathon wiki (this is easy to generate from the tracker).

Prizes:

• First prize: AU$250
  
• Second prize: AU$100
• Third prize: Choice of any item from the Moodle Shop

Hi SCORMers,

Roberto Pinna started and supported the SCORM module in Moodle nearly three and a half years ago as a volunteer (thanks again, Roberto).

Unfortunately he's been too busy doing other things for some time, and there is an increasing number of bugs and missing functionality in the SCORM module code:

List of unresolved SCORM bugs

In some cases later Moodle releases have got worse because some maintainers (I'll not mention names ) have been committing SCORM fixes to the stable branches only (and not to the current dev versions) ...

I brought in some new maintainers to help last year but they seemed to have trouble getting a handle on the module and very little happened.

So I'm still looking for someone to help here, someone who can take what we have and turn it into a 100% rock-solid SCORM 1.2 implementation first (certifiable) and then push it forward to finish off the SCORM 1.3 / 2004 support.

The problem is in two parts:
- we need a very good developer
- we need some funding to pay that developer

I can help partially with the funding, but the problem is manpower.

Surely there must be someone out there willing to take this on! Can any of you who really need to have SCORM working help us out here?

Thanks for all the testing and bug reports from everyone recently!

Moodle 1.9 is coming together well, so I'll be creating the MOODLE_19_STABLE branch later today.

If you are testing/using the 1.9 code from CVS, make sure you change to the new branch and stop using HEAD.

The command with command line CVS is:

 cvs -q update -dP -r MOODLE_19_STABLE

The actual release date is still unknown (but soon!), I want us all to keep working on known bugs (which are mostly minor now) for a bit longer.

Testers, please keep looking at existing resolved bugs and closing them if you can confirm they are fixed.

I've really held off branching MOODLE_19_STABLE for a long time in this cycle to make things as easy as possible on developers for as long as possible (and to help drive the stabilisation process as hard as possible). We also had a number of last-minute but major changes (such as performance improvements) during the beta period which is also unusual.

However, overall things are looking pretty good now, so I'm intending to create MOODLE_19_STABLE off HEAD in about 5 and half hours from now (5pm GMT+8) unless some really good reason comes up.

This will mean a 100% freeze on database changes in 1.9 so please let me know if there are any important ones still outstanding.

Just to let you all know, the old security.moodle.org site has been decommissioned.

Everything about how security reporting and tracking works is now here on this page: http://moodle.org/security