I think the Rules and Regulations sticky can be augmented with general information about what belongs in area51 and to provide direction for new members. To that end I propose the following additions:
Purpose
- The purpose of area51 development board is to discuss and collaborate on the development of phpBB itself. Topics pertaining solely to the following items should not be posted on area51:
- Using phpBB - please use phpBB support forums on phpbb.com.
- Modifying phpBB - please use MOD writers discussion forum on phpbb.com.
- phpBB development occurs on multiple branches in parallel. The wiki page tbd has the breakdown. Please follow these guidelines when deciding which forum to post in:
- If you found a bug in a released version of phpBB, file it in the tracker. Please search for an existing bug report first.
- If you want to request a feature, search the tracker and check 3.1 status topic to see if your feature is already on the roadmap. If your feature already has a topic or a ticket, continue there; otherwise (you are proposing a brand new feature that was never discussed before) create a new topic in 3.2 discussion or 3.2 RFC and patch forum depending on the detail level of your proposal.
- If you have a patch you want to submit for inclusion into phpBB, file a ticket in the tracker for the issue/enhancement (if there is not already one) and attach/link your patch to the ticket.
- phpBB developers gather in #phpbb-coding channel on freenode. The IRC channel is sometimes quiet and sometimes lively. Some developers monitor the channel even when they do not participate. Please see here for instructions on joining the IRC channel.
- phpBB welcomes all contributions, but those contributions which follow the development team's guidelines are more likely to be accepted, or accepted quicker. Please take a moment to review:
- Coding guidelines - standards that code committed to phpBB repository must satisfy.
- Development process - versions, workflow, etc.
- Patch workflow - how patches are handled.
- phpBB development occurs on multiple branches in parallel. Currently we have the following branches:
- 3.0 "Olympus" is in maintenance mode. Ideally only bugfixes are to be applied to 3.0.x branch. Occasionally new features are allowed if they are small and do not affect backwards compatibility. Really we want new development to happen in subsequent major releases (3.1, 3.2, etc.).
- 3.1 "Ascraeus" is the focus of new development. New features currently being worked on will go into 3.1. Also, 3.1 is now feature frozen; new features not on that list will generally have to wait until 3.2, with exception of features that are needed for already accepted features. The current status of 3.1 is here.
- 3.2 "Arsia" will be the next feature release. New features that are not already accepted into 3.1 should be proposed for 3.2.