Some of you may remember the Rails Hackfests that were conducted in 2007 and 2008. Well, with some help from the RailsBridge folks, we’re bringing back something similar :

The First Rails and RailsBridge BugMash

The idea is simple: RailsBridge has a lot of energy. The Rails Lighthouse has a lot of open tickets. By combining the RailsBridge enthusiasm with guidance from some Rails Core team members, we’re going to see what we can do to cut down the number of open tickets, encourage more people to get involved with the Rails source, and have some fun.

Here’s how it will work: the BugMash will run over the weekend of August 8-9. The Rails team will identify open issues that need some help and tag them in Lighthouse. Participants will draw from this pool with four goals:

1. Confirm that the bug can be reproduced
2. If it can’t be reproduced, try to figure out what information would make it possible to reproduced
3. If it can be reproduced, add the missing pieces: better repro instructions, a failing patch, and/or a patch that applies cleanly to the current Rails source
4. Bring promising tickets to the attention of the Core team

RailsBridge is organizing both face-to-face and online support for BugMash participants. The plan is to do everything possible to make it easy to start contributing to Rails, and to increase even further the substantial pool of developers who have helped make Rails what it is.

For more details, including a checklist of what you can do to get ready to work in the Rails source and details on a scoring system and rewards for the most active participants, keep an eye on the RailsBridge Wiki (a work in progress). For now, though, there are two things for you to do:

1. Reserve at least a chunk of that weekend to roll up your sleeves and work on the BugMash
2. Speak up by updating the wiki or posting on the mailing lists ( rubyonrails-core or railsbridge ) if you can contribute prizes, familiarity with the Rails source, or other help to the project.