Contributing to wordpress plug-ins (Pull requests?)

  • mwyraz

    (@mwyraz)


    7 years, 6 months ago

    Dear ww.wp.xz.cn team,

    today I found a small bug in a plug-in that is hosted at ww.wp.xz.cn/plugins. That bug was mentioned in several posts of the plug-in’s support forum. Fixing it in the code took me just a few minutes. Then I started to investigate in how I can contribute a patch to the plug-in.

    I have asked in the irc chat. People there recommended me things like “post in the forum” or “try to contact the author”. At the end I posted my patch as a github gist and wrote a support forum post.

    This reminds me of a time when development has been made on sourceforge.net. The hurdle to send a patch was high. The hurdle to accept a patch as high too. In many years I contributed just a handfull patches – only bigger stuff, no small patches because the effort was too high compared to the result.

    Then github came and reduced the process to 2 clicks for the contributor and 1 click for the maintainer. In the last few years I forked >>50 projects to provide small and big patches. That includes one-liner patches that fixes a typo.

    Wordpress lives from it’s plug-in ecosystem and the quality of the plug-ins. If the hurdle to provide small fixes is too high, the majority of small fixes will not make it into the plug-in. You should really think about adding modern collaboration features (especially something like pull requests) to lower that hurdle.

    Best regards,
    Michael.

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  • noraconley

    (@noraconley)

    7 years, 6 months ago

    [I am not a member of the plugin team, just a plugin developer sharing my experience]

    Hi Michael, first off, thank you for taking time to find a bug in a plugin and to come up with a patch. Unfortunately, there is no standard way of providing patches to plugins. Some plugins are developed on Github or elsewhere and then they are uploaded to the plugin directory using SVN.

    I would see if you can find the place of development for this plugin (and it may be private or not under version control other than SVN). The development workflow does not live on ww.wp.xz.cn, it is only for the release workflow.

    You might also try the Slack channel if the author of the plugin is there. If this is a security patch, checkout this link: https://developer.ww.wp.xz.cn/plugins/wordpress-org/plugin-security/reporting-plugin-security-issues/

    • This reply was modified 7 years, 6 months ago by noraconley.
    Moderator Jan Dembowski

    (@jdembowski)

    Forum Moderator and Brute Squad

    7 years, 6 months ago

    Moved to Everything else WordPress, this is not a Requests and Feedback topic.

    today I found a small bug in a plug-in that is hosted at ww.wp.xz.cn/plugins. That bug was mentioned in several posts of the plug-in’s support forum. Fixing it in the code took me just a few minutes. Then I started to investigate in how I can contribute a patch to the plug-in.

    Except for asking in that plugin’s support sub-forum, there isn’t anything to do. Plugins and themes here are not like code hosted on Github or Sourceforge.

    The code is the responsibility of the author and no one else. If it’s a security issue then report it via the link above.

Viewing 2 replies - 1 through 2 (of 2 total)

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