Drumbeat/Communication Channels
This is a quick rundown of the communication channels we have in Mozilla and on the Drumbeat project, and how and when it's best to use them.
Wiki
wiki.mozilla.org is great for collaboratively authoring documents, such as our Drumbeat developer documentation.
Other important pages, such as install instructions and patch procedure, are linked from that one. Do consult it if you need info on procedure, and post a discussion forum message to let people know if it's not complete.
Usage: anything with enduring relevance and importance must go here.
Discussion Forum
We have a discussion forum, mozilla.drumbeat.website.
Please subscribe. You get a choice of three ways to read - news, email or on the web as a Google Group.
Usage: announcements and other things of immediate relevance, or general development discussion, go here. Please do keep people up to date with what you are up to :-)
Bugzilla
Any change to the site or any problem with it should have a Bugzilla bug associated with it, even trivial ones. We don't need to conserve bug numbers :-) CC the people you think need to know about the bug or whose input you want.
Website problem | Production server problem IT has to fix
Usage: any changes to the site should have an associated bug for tracking them through the process from dev to production.
IRC
Our IRC channels, #drumbeat-dev (for website development) and #drumbeat (general discussion), are great for real-time chat, but shouldn't be used for passing on important information. For stuff which is only immediately relevant, use email (point-to-point) or, better, the discussion group. For stuff with long-term relevance, use the wiki.
Usage: real-time communication and one-to-one or one-to-few chat. Avoid using for stuff of broad relevance (-> discussion forum) or stuff of enduring interest (-> wiki).
Subversion
Our Subversion repository is:
svn://svn.mozilla.org/projects/crm
You can also view the code on the web.
Anyone can check the code out anonymously and work with it. If they don't have commit access, they can then attach patches to bugs and people can apply them and check them in. Commit access isn't needed to make a useful contribution.
Email's great, but try and remember not to use it when it would be better to use the discussion forum. Default to being open :-)
