Often I find absolutely competent programmers, who aren't involved in open source, either because they don't know how to approach a project, or because they just aren't sure how the process even works. In this article we'll look at one example, the conference feedback site joind.in, and how you can use GitHub to start contributing code to this project. Since so many projects are hosted on github, this will help you get started with other projects, too.

She covers all you'll need to know to get in and get going with Github - forking a current repo (she uses Joind.in as an example), cloning your fork, making updates and submitting them as a pull request back to the main project. There's also some things about general git topics like branching, merging from the upstream source and using "git log" to view the changes.

As PHP has moved to git recently everybody who works on the PHP source has to recreate his work environment. When working on PHP I have a few requirements for my working dirs. For one I want to be able to use different branches (like 5.3, 5.4 and master) at the same time and I want to quickly test different PHP configurations, like builds using thread-safety or debug mode on or off.

He includes a set of commands you can use to to clone the new repository and create different working directories for the different kinds of builds that you want to install. He also points out as a shell script on github.

Today EllisLab and the CodeIgniter Reactor Engineers are proud to announce the first official release of CodeIgniter 2.0.0, which is being released in two flavors.

The "Core" version will be the branch that EllisLab uses for their internal applications and will be a bit slower moving. The "Reactor" branch, however, is more community-powered and headed up by a set of Engineers that will guide the framework and work to make it its best. Also mentioned as new in the post are the upcoming ability for users to contribute directly to the user guide, the creation of a standardized Authentication library and a more object-like model setup. If you're interested in the Reactor branch and want to try it out or contribute, head over to the bitbucket account for the project.

A couple of weeks ago, Derek Jones of EllisLabs announced that the CodeIgniter Core would officially be branched so a community-driven version of the framework could be created. This new branch will be called CodeIgniter Reactor. The plan, which was clarified today, is focused on allowing a select group of CI engineers to actively commit new features to the codebase, while taking feature requests via a uservoice forum. Over time, any proven, time-tested features in Reactor will be merged into the Core.

He touches on things like the Kohana framework, why he thinks the CodeIgniter community is still so strong, what he sees happening with the Reactor project and his own word to the skeptics.

EllisLab, Inc. is formally announcing CodeIgniter Reactor, a community driven branch of CodeIgniter that will enable faster adoption of the best community submitted code to the CodeIgniter open source PHP framework. CodeIgniter Reactor will be available the first quarter of 2011. A second branch, CodeIgniter Core, will be maintained by EllisLab and incorporate the best of Reactor at a slower, more enterprise-friendly pace.

The Reactor branch will be the one headed up by the six engineers they selected from the CI community. EllisLab has handed this branch off into their capable hands. The Core branch will remain as-is and will be updated as EllisLab sees the need for some of their products. The UserVoice system has been set up to allow other developers a voice in what they think needs to be included in the next versions of the framework. If you're interested in contributing, you can find that here.

Phil, Derek and Kenny have a chat about the recent changes in CodeIgniter 2.0 (dropping PHP4 and others) and talk about the new CodeIgniter Community Branch.

Resources mentioned include Derick Allard's blog, the official information about the community branch, Ion Auth and a course schedule and booking system example. You can either download the mp3 of the episode or you can listen on the in-page player.

The confusion lies in the purpose of the NDA, and the scope of what it covers. The branch's development will not be under NDA, nor will discussions between the deputies and the community, how they receive code submissions, what they reveal to others about their own plans, and so on.

The NDA does, however, cover any discussions that might be had with the EllisLab group about the structure and guidelines concerning the development of the branch. It's not designed to keep the community out of the development process but rather to keep things about ElliLab's other products out of the larger flow of ideas.

Rightly or wrongly, many in our community see Perl 6 as the definitive example of vaporware. But what about PHP 6? This release was first discussed by the PHP core developers back in 2005. There have been books on the shelves purporting to cover PHP 6 since at least 2008. But, in March 2010, the PHP 6 release is not out - in fact, it is not even close to out. Recent events suggest that PHP 6 will not be released before 2011 - if, indeed, it is released at all.

He talks about features that were supposed to disappear in PHP6 (with some of them making their way into PHP 5.3) including the Unicode support the language needs more and more. He mentions how the development has stalled out a bit recently but has been spurred back to life when major decisions were made to get away from a PHP 5.4 branch and move back to PHP6.

Be sure to check out the great comments on the post from other PHP developers from all around the web.

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The 27th of January is kind of an important date in mankind history. Of course, everybody know it is the birthday of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and the date of the invention of the light-bulb by Thomas Edison. To this list, the core team is proud to add the last release of the symfony 1.0 branch: symfony 1.0.22.

It's been three years since the first release in the 1.0.x series was made and a lot of progress has come along since then (including a few other branches) including over 163,000 lines of code, 22 stable releases and more than 300 plugins. You can grab the latest from their 1.4.x series (currently 1.4.1) from thier download page either as a package or as a checkout from their Subversion repository.

Great stuff is happening today! I would dare to say that to date, December 1 2009 is probably the most active and important day in the history of the symfony project! Three(!) new versions have been released, amongst which the first of the last branch of symfony 1, and a new book is available in the form of an online advent calendar and a print book.

The releases included a major bugfix release (1.2.10) and the two new branches - Symfony 1.3 and 1.4. You can find their advent calendar for this year here. Its different than in the last two years - it's not a project but more the usual collection of articles.