[Mono-dev] Unit Testing process: Community Contributions

[Edward Ned Harvey (mono)]

> From: Miguel de Icaza [mailto:miguel at xamarin.com]
> 
> I have not seen you discuss any pull requests on the mailing list.  Did I miss
> something?

In order to respond to this question, I just reviewed all the history of my pull request, but there was a lot of volume in disjoint places (github, bugzilla, this mailing list, xamarin support, xamarin forums, stackoverflow, etc).  By going through all that review myself, I concluded that there's no need to rehash it in detail.  This is the conclusion:

Back in April, I discussed the details of the bug on this list, with Sebastien (Xamarin employee and mono contributor).  Amidst my discussions with Sebastien, I asked what process to follow.  Rolf (Xamarin employee, mono contributor) said "The standard way is to fork on github, then send a pull request."  So that's what I did.  A week or two later, having received no reply, I emailed the list asking about status and referencing the pull request.  A week or two later, Miguel you assigned to @spoulliot, but you did not reply back to the list.  A month later, jstedfast (Xamarin employee, mono contributor) poked @spoulliot on github, but not on the mailing list.  At least one other user watching the pull request poked it trying to get attention to no avail.  Eventually, in September, I just kept whining on the list and the pull request was finally reviewed.  (Unfortunately, it was reviewed and rejected by Sebastien, without discussing on the list what's wrong, or how we could make progress and move it forward from this point - but that's a separate issue, that I can work through if I want to.)

So the conclusion is this:  In the past, as recently as September, it has not been clear what path to follow.  Even Xamarin employees and mono contributors (and even Miguel) didn't have any organized approach or good understanding of what path to follow.  So moving forward, what we all need to do is as Miguel says now:  Keep the discussion alive on the list, before, during, and after the pull request.  This is a clear direction, applying now and to the future, not in the past.

Xamarin employees who are mono contributors - Please spread this knowledge to other Xamarin employees & mono contributors.  If you guys don't spread it amongst yourselves, we'll have more problems like the one described above.

As to the non-connection between Xamarin and Mono support:  Got it.  Point taken.  In the past, there was something somewhere on mono-project.com suggesting that mono support could be obtained via Xamarin, but nothing of the sort seems to exist now.  Ok, no problem.  Can deal.