Contribution Day in numbers so far

First of all, the cool thing is that the Contribution Day is already a success: The number of signups for this day so far is 53 people, meaning that 53 developers will focus on improving Magento code and/or code in general by joining forces. The day will be filled with collaborative coding, pair programming, brainstorms and obviously, fun.

In the beginning, we were a bit afraid to see whether this hackathon would become a success. But it now is definitive: It already is a success number wise.

Mixed program

The unique thing about this hackathon is that it - just like MageTestFest as a whole - focuses on testing. Instead of just fixing bugs in the Magento core, we'll focus on testing instead:

• Pull Requests should deal with unit tests or integration tests
• Guidance for the new Functional Testing Framework is given
• People can work on the MSI project
• Blackfire is present to help out with performance testing
• Whatever happens, it needs to deal with tests

Magento Community Engineering presence

But there is more: 2 members of the Magento Community Engineering team (one of them being Igor Miniailo) will be present to help people fix bugs, as they have done already before at numerous Contribution Days. On November 18th, things will be slightly different though: We'll focus on testing and testing only.

Every Pull Request that is made needs to do something with testing, either with unit tests or integration tests or both. Issues without any tests involved will be discouraged. Issues with tests will focus on the testing part - how to write proper stubs, mocks, fixtures. And the Magento team is there to help you out.

Putting the Functional Testing Framework to work

Tom Erskine and Ian Meron will guide you into the usage of the new Functional Testing Framework. This allows you to build - on top of your unit tests and integration tests - functional tests (with or without a Selenium automation) so that one module can be tested in combination with another module.

Small presentations might be given to further introduce the Functional Testing Framework (building from the talk Tom has given on November 17th) and things can be put to use. Because the Functional Testing Framework is fresh, this Contribution Day is going to be one of the first events that allows Magento developers and third-party developers to meet and exchange thoughts on this new tool.

Blackfire

And there is even more: Beau Simensen - developer & technical product manager at Blackfire - is with us to help people build on top of this testing stack using Blackfire. This is much more than just the regular profiling that you're used to do with Blackfire: The opportunity here is to add hooks to your git actions, or commands to your deployment strategy, to allow Blackfire to do performance testing before you roll out changes to production: Performance testing.

We are really excited to have Blackfire sponsor MageTestFest as a Golden Sponsor. We are even more excited that Blackfire could attend this hackathon and help developers out with the perfect debugging tool.

Your own stuff

Wow, there is so much to do. But instead of mingling with all of this, it is still ok to focus on your own code: If tests are lacking, or if you are struggling with where to begin, this is the chance to get started practically and add tests to your workflow.

However, please note, I'm walking around as a dictator: If you are not dealing with testing, you're out! Just kidding. Not.