I started using Media Gallery on Vejle Idrætshøjskole to quickly setup up a media gallery, and seeing that it builds on the media project and it is used in Drupal Gardens, I did not hesitate to install it, and I was able to get a working gallery online quickly. 

However, I quickly ran into some bugs and I wanted to make Media Gallery usable with the 2.x-branch of Media, so I needed to go to the issue queue. There was a lot of patches needing review, but also some patches, which had been tested by the community, but not commited.

I was hoping that the developers would have a look at my issues, so I started working the issue queue, so the developers would have less issues to focus at. I answered support requests, closed issues which had been resolved, looked for duplicates, created patches and started reviewing patches.

Getting new people involved

But nothing got commited and the current maintainers did not have time to respond. Therefore, I filed an issue offering to co-maintain Media Gallery and get things committed. Luckily the developers answered promptly, so now the Media Gallery is alive again. The most active contributor in the issue queue is Moloc, so I asked whether the wanted to help getting the project in a less buggy state, and he agreed.

Bugs are getting fixed

Our primary focus as co-maintainers are fixing bugs and getting Media Gallery to work with the 2.x-branch of Media. We already committed a bunch of stuff, and we working towards releasing beta8 soon. When is that, you may ask. When it is ready, is our answer. We are both working on the project in our spare time, because we need the functionality ourselves, and could use help.

How can I help getting a new release sooner?

There is a lot to do.

• Write tests. At the moment there is no tests for this module.
• Write patches. Find the bugs and write a patch, which the community can review.
• Review patches. We need to move the patches through the issue queue, so please help review them. For an easier start, use the media_dev-profile.
• Answer questions in the issue queue. There is enough to do in the issue queue. Please share your insights.
• Drupal handbook. Add some documentation to the Drupal Handbook.

Roadmap

This is our plans for beta8 and beta9. Want a release soon. Jump into the issue queue and help out.

Lesson learned

Maintaining a project is a lot of work, and there is a lot of people doing great work in the Drupal community both as maintainers, but also as active contributors in the issue queues. Recently, I asked what to do, when the maintainer does not respond. One of the comments stated, that people are on different schedules. You need the project now, but maybe the maintainer has other projects, that he needs to attend to.

However, waiting for answers is demotivating when you have done some work on patches or other stuff, and it is not being discussed or merged into the project. Having patches too long in the issue queue will also make them stale, so they have to be rerolled, which is even more work.

I am not expecting to maintain media gallery forever, but right now I have the time to contribute, and the maintainers of Media Gallery let me. Maybe other busy project maintainers should get co-maintainers?