I tried following the manual to get my first project on Drupal.org this week.
I ended up with heaps of tabs open, with pages from all over the site. Felt like untangling spaghetti.

Material is duplicated; pages direct the reader to another page which then directs you on to a futher page, and so on.
Needs a thorough clean-up.

Comments

sepeck’s picture

sepeck commented
Status: Active » Postponed (maintainer needs more info)

You will need to be far more specific then this unless you are planning on doing the work. If so, please contact and coordinate with dww, hunmonk and possibly Michelle

joachim’s picture

joachim commented

I could do the work, though I don't have weight-setting rights.
Also, I tend to be ruthless. I'm used to the Wikipedia 'be bold' ethos, and I'm still not sure how that goes down here :)

add1sun’s picture

add1sun commented

I'd like a group of us to work on this during the docs sprint at Drupalcon (Friday, March 7, both locally in Boston and online in IRC.) So, if you can be around for that conversation, that would be great.

joachim’s picture

joachim commented

I won't be around at all as I'm travelling that weekend.
Hence why I was filing a few issues for you ;)

I'll try and do a summary of the problems I had trying to follow this to create my first project.

sepeck’s picture

sepeck commented

Being ruthless isn't really a problem. We have revisions turned on and that nice little diff module for comparison. For radical changes then an issue where you hash out notes and approaches works to get a feel with others for tone and style of the community.

joachim’s picture

joachim commented

Ok... I'm going to recreate my journey through the docs:

'Maintaining a project on drupal.org' http://drupal.org/node/7765 is obviously the starting point.
However, it immediately shoots me sideways to CVS http://drupal.org/handbook/cvs
I then go to 'Maintaining d.o projects with CVS' http://drupal.org/handbook/cvs/projects, which appears to be a full guide to getting this done....
So three clicks already, just to get started.
At this point, I'm wondering: if http://drupal.org/handbook/cvs/projects is the proper guide to doing this, why does http://drupal.org/node/7765 have some bullet point instructions, apart from to confuse me? In fact, does 'Maintaining a project on drupal.org' serve any purpose at all?

Anyway. Maybe 'CVS maintainer quick-start guide' http://drupal.org/handbook/cvs/quickstart will help... (four clicks now).
This is CVS command-line only, but let's pass on that. It also doesn't give any help about the drupal.org side of things (eg, how to fill in fields for a new project). For that, I have to go hunting back in my history, because I'm SURE I've seen something about it....

Oh, there's 'Step-by-step: Create a CVS project' http://drupal.org/node/100748 -- surely that's direct duplication of 'CVS maintainer quick-start guide' http://drupal.org/handbook/cvs/quickstart. The two should be merged.
(BTW, http://drupal.org/node/112902 is another duplicate. There is no reason to have a page specifically on contributing theme projects, it's all the same stuff. And as with other handbook pages I've seen lately, nobody cares how this page originally came about or the author's dog.)

At some point I need to go to the randomly named 'Best Practices' http://drupal.org/node/188986. This really needs to be a checklist of what a project needs to have before you start on Drupal.org CVS. It should be presented as one of the steps in getting your project on, eg 'Project requirements' or something.

Finally, I have to go to 'Managing Releases' http://drupal.org/handbook/cvs/releases (whose weight is wrong). This is comprehensive, but almost too much -- for a newbie who just wants to get the FIRST release out of the door, it's TMI.

In summary: several pages duplicate the same instructions in subtly different ways, in some cases only partially overlapping. Stuff is dotted across different handbooks. There's no clear path to go from start to finish.

I now have about 8 tabs open in my browser (and that's without having gone to look up the specifics of the CVS client I'm using). Some are possibly duplicates. I'm not sure where to start or how to follow them.

joachim’s picture

joachim commented
Status: Postponed (maintainer needs more info) » Active

I'm about to host a new project on drupal.org, and still finding this very difficult to follow.

add1sun’s picture

add1sun commented

If we can kickstart the Contrib section redesign of the handbook (http://drupal.org/node/240248) then this will fall under there.

add1sun’s picture

add1sun commented
Component: Developer Guide » Correction/Clarification

We've started the reorganization and cleanup of this section in the new Getting Involved book. Please check it out and see if it is at least moving in the right direction. It still needs lots of love.

add1sun’s picture

add1sun commented
Status: Active » Closed (duplicate)

i'm going to close this issue and we'll continue cleanup in the other issue #240248: Getting Involved: Contributing code section work