Imagine that moment: you’ve written your first patch for Postgres, the community said it’s a good idea and there’s no major problem with it. What’s the next step so the community can add it to Postgres code?
Commitfests 🔗
Once every two months or so, there’s this particular moment in the Postgres project where we try to review patches and commit those that are mature enough. It’s a one month period. Everyone can register to review a patch. Reading code is easier than writing one, so it’s strongly suggested to begin there.
If you’ve already discussed your patch with hackers on the hackers mailing-list, perhaps a good angel already registered your patch. But you can’t always rely on others :-).
Registering your patch step by step 🔗
First, you need to visit the commitfest website. You’ll find a lot of commitfest links with their status (Closed, In Progress, Open, Future). You’re looking for the “Open” commitfest.
Then, you need to click on the “New patch” button. (You’ll need a community account to pursue with your patch’s registration.)
Enter a description (normally your first e-mail object should be good) and a topic (that one can be tricky, but don’t worry it can be changed afterward). To find the thread, click on the “find thread” button and either enter your name (if rare in the community as mine) or a specific word in your first mail, choose the right thread (first e-mail of the thread) and click the “attach thread” button. After that, you need to confirm creation with the “create patch” button.
Then, you may add a wikilink or a gitlink and you need to add author(s). Simply type the authors’ usernames (or real names) and the system will find them for you. If you want to add authors that are not listed, you have to click on the “import user not listed” button.
… And you’re done!