Pizza, Bugs and Fun

On February 22, we came together once again for our global day of collaboration, dedicated to squashing bugs, testing pull requests, writing documentation, having fun, and… enjoying pizza!

Over 50 Joomlers from 16 different countries joined forces to make Joomla even better, working tirelessly from the sunrise in Australia to the sunset in California. 

All together we completed 45 tests of pull requests and submitted 26 articles to the documentation, while 4 new pull requests were registered that day. One PR was improved, tested and now merged into 6.0. At least that is what was officially registered on our spreadsheet. That is not complete, as we heard about 20 people and dozens of tests that day that were not in these statistics.

There were also some nice “side effects” of the PBF, like the resurrection of the Bengali language for Joomla (thanks, ThemeXpert team). But it is not only the end result that counts. Pizza, Bugs & Fun (PBF) is a community activity: working together, helping each other, getting to know new people, making fun and friends.

Thank you!

We had a new sponsor providing us with test-servers: LucusHost, a Spanish web hosting company that also sponsored the last couple of JDays Spain. A huge thank you to them and the other incredible sponsors that made this day possible: Djumla, Akeeba and JoomDonation.

A big shout out to everybody that helped with the organisation of this day. A lot of work was put into preparing information about pull requests that could be tested,setting up test-servers,providing information about documentation that is needed, putting up a dedicated website and making videos. Weeks of preparation went into making this day a reality.

Above all, a standing ovation to everyone across the globe who joined and contributed! You helped to give Joomla a boost in the last months before our 5.3 release. You deserve a medal: Holopin badges were specially crafted (thank you, Louise) for this event and sent to the participants.

More sophisticated

All pull requests for Joomla need two independent tests. To ease testing we use the Patch Tester component. Pull requests with NPM dependency changes cannot be tested with the Patch Tester, but need a slightly more sophisticated setup of a local test environment. During this PBF we ran out of pull requests that could be simply tested. Therefore even some less experienced testers took the plunge doing those more complex tests. Quite a challenge if you have never done that. But here again you saw the power of a community: helping each other and explaining how to tackle those more advanced tests.

We are looking for ways to make these kinds of tests easier. We also have a few new ideas for enhancement of the Patch Tester. Remarkable fact: during the PBF a small improvement of the Patch Tester (hiding the apply button for pull requests that require additional steps) was formulated, coded and immediately merged during the PBF (thanks Roland).

Marathon

It was a long day. Volunteers in different time zones came and went. It was impossible to be there all the time, from beginning to end. Well, not entirely impossible… One guy from the indomitable Gauls was there for more than 24 hours. And he was very active too, helping everybody from around the globe. Is there still some druid making a magic potion, so he could be there the whole marathon? Around his 24th hour of the PBF, he shut down his camera in the central Google meet, but his microphone was still open. For a short moment we could hear some snoring sound… until we mentioned his name. Merci, Emmanuel, you were amazing!

The debut of Joomla-crafted documentation!

Adding documentation to the wiki was a bit of a hassle in the 2024 PBF. We now had the premiere of adding user documentation with… tada… Joomla! In our sandbox documentation site you can simply add an article using Joomla’s front-end editing.We still have to further build out how we process those contributions, but it is a good start using Joomla for documentation. 

From Mattermost:

We use the Joomla Workflow component and versioning. Next step is to build a team that is able to quickly give feedback on contributions and publish them. That is a goal for the next PBF.

See you in August!

Of course you want to join us for the next Pizza, Bugs & Fun! To help testing the last bits of Joomla 6, which will be released in October. The next global PBF is planned by the end of  August. There is always a possibility to participate, both in person and online. You are very welcome! Together we’ll squash the bugs, have fun and… enjoy the pizza.