The next BugQuash is approaching fast (on May 17th) and we’re busy making sure things run smoother this time around.

Bugs In Progress

There’s a lot we’re trying to improve, but one of them is the process by which developers can find a bug to work on or help with. The Adobe Bug System doesn’t have the hooks in it yet to allow a perfect workflow, but we’re getting there. Currently, choosing a bug to work on means you go into the bug system, find the bug you want to tackle and add a comment to the bug that you’re working on it. It’s ok, but if you want to help someone with a bug or provide input or review a bug that had been patched, it wasn’t easy to connect up with that developer.

To remedy that, we’re developing a connect room pod that will allow users to ender the bug number (i.e., SDK-12345) and it will gather the information from the Adobe Bug System and place it in a dataGrid on the QuashBoard that shows bugs in progress. That way, if you want to review someones patch or collaborate on a particular bug, you can see what’s being worked on, in real time.

Scoreboard

This is something we’re still trying to iron out the details of, but the grand idea is that you’d have an ‘NSL’ (Ninja Skill Level). You’d get points for all the patches you submit, bonus points for having them peer-reviewed and of course more points if the patch is accepted. The more you work on the SDK, the more points you get. If you’re hardcore, you’ll get the props for it. BugQuash.com will host the scoreboard so you can see how you’re doing compared to the rest of the community.

Help Queue

So, this won’t necessarily be a queue, but more of a list of people who are requesting help. They could need help with setting up their environment or help understanding Regular Expressions. Whatever it is, they would enter their question and it would go into a list seperate from the Connect room chat, where they could get lost in the noise. We noticed there were a lot of people who would ask questions 3 or 4 times and never get answered because of all the other chat going on. I’m sure many got frustrated and left as a result.

Our goal is to arm everyone who attends with the tools and knowledge they need to fix bugs in the Flex SDK. That means that those people with very basic questions about setting up your system should receive as much (or more) attention as the developer who is on his third patch and needs to know the correct order for dispatching a components’ events. Hopefully, this will level the playing field.

If you haven’t registered to participate in the event, either remotely or in person, get on it right away! You’ll get a Pre-Event Kit with a ton of links to resources so you can be prepared before the event starts.