Contributing to the HTML5 Initiative

The HTML5 initiative is still in the early stages of planning, and this page is very much a work in progress. Updated information will be posted in this section as it becomes available.

The process of modifying Drupal core to use HTML5 will happen in Drupal's core issue queue. Tasks will be broken into small, manageable, task-oriented issues. Each issue/task will be discussed, prioritized and ultimately implemented in these issues. We'll need help in the form of: feedback on issues, patches, patch reviews, testing, documentation and project management help to help organize and distribute the work.

The issues relevant to this initiative will be tagged HTML5, and they can be found here:

• Browser: http://drupal.org/project/issues/search/drupal?version[0]=8.x&issue_tags=html5
• RSS: http://drupal.org/project/issues/search/drupal/rss?version[0]=8.x&issue_tags=html5
• Twitter: @drupal8html5

General HTML5 discussion can also be found in the HTML5 group.

Meetings

We hold an open meeting in IRC every two weeks to discuss priorities, progress and issues. The meeting announcements are posted in the HTML5 group, which sends e-mail notifications for new posts/events. Please join the group if you are interested in helping with this effort.

You can subscribe to the Google Calendar for this and future meetings via the iCal or XML feeds.

IRC

Connect with team members and Drupal contributors working on HTML5 on IRC:

1. #drupal-html5 is smaller crowd, dedicated to discussions about HTML5 and Drupal.
2. #drupal-contribute is the place to go to discuss general issues about contributing to Drupal, whether it be core or contrib.

Making changes to Drupal core (participating in the issue queue)

In a nutshell, this steps below describe the life cycle of a typical Drupal core issue. These steps have been tailored slightly to fit the HTML5 initiative and are meant to give you a "quick start" overview of how the process works, so you can jump and help. For complete documentation on contributing to core and general advice, visit the Drupal core contributions section of the handbook.

1. A single task, problem or solution that needs to be addressed is identified.
2. A search of existing issues is performed to prevent posting a duplicate issue.
3. An issue describing the bug report, feature request, or a task is created and tagged HTML5. Adding this tag is very important to ensure it stays on the HTML5 initiative team's radar.
4. Others in the community read the issue and discuss its merit and possible solutions the comments.
5. Once the general direction is agreed upon (and sometimes beforehand), one or more of the participants post a patch which makes the proposed changes to the codebase.
6. The participants then test and review the patch to ensure its quality, and provide feedback. There are many things to check for during this process:
   • Does the patch solve the problems outlined in the issue?
   • Is the solution aligned with the initiative goals?
   • Does the code conform to Drupal coding standards?
   • Has the patch successfully been tested with existing core themes?
   • Has the patch successfully been cross-browser tested?
   • Is the documentation sufficient?
   • Does the patch have unit tests (usually for more advanced patches)?
   • Does the patch pass the testbot?
7. If the issue is long and has changed direction more than once, issue summaries (which are extremely helpful for those joining a long discussion) should be created.
8. Once all of the above has been satisfied, the code will be marked "Reviewed and tested by the community" or RTBC.
9. Then the initiative leader will do a final review before committing to the initiative branch, and will return to report the issue as "fixed" or "needs work" if additional documentation is needed.
10. Eventually, the Drupal 8 maintainer or Dries will merge the initiative branch code into the the main branch.