Submitting a Feature Request for PCGen

 

        The purpose of this document is to provide a walk through of how to properly submit a feature request at Source Forge for PCGen. Please read the Bug vs. Feature to make sure that what you want to submit is a feature request.

 

        Before you attempt to submit a feature request, visit the PCGen Yahoo Group message boards (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/pcgen), and describe your feature request. Feature Requests are often referred to as FREQs on the board. This way others can help you refine the request or tell you that it's already been entered as a FREQ or even point out that the FREQ would be useful for another book as well. Once the FREQ has been kicked about and refined you can then submit it.

 

Submitting your Feature Request

Go to http://sourceforge.net/projects/pcgen/ and go to Tracker (Either at the top of the screen or scroll down slightly to see ‘Tracker’.

 

Click on Feature Requests if you want to request a feature, or Output Request if it's a request related to a character sheet.

 

Search through the listed features, making sure that Assignee, Category, and Group are set to ‘Any’, that Status is set to ‘Open’, and that Sort By is set to ‘ID’, to see if your problem is already submitted.  If it is, add a message at the bottom of the feature request detailing your information as well.  This will give the developer who takes on this request as much information as possible to best resolve the issue to everyone's satisfaction.

 

If it does not exist, select ‘Submit New’.  Make sure you select the appropriate category, Group, and make a concise summary of the request.

 

In the Detailed Description, please please be sure to explain clearly what you're trying to accomplish with this request. DO NOT submit one feature request and put a whole slew of requests in there. The developers do this in their free-time, so if a request really appears to be a lot of requests, they will tend to look for other more concise requests. If you have 3 requests which are fairly similar, or related to supporting a specific book (or other source), submit 3 individual requests. You could note in the detailed description of each the request # for the other two so whoever works on any of them know that there's another requests that could be handled at the same time. When describing your feature request, be sure to consider if other sources or books might require something similar. If we can have one feature request address a similar issue in a number of books it will be seen as more important and be more likely to receive prompt attention.

If your feature request involves new tags or syntax, it's always helpful to suggest the name and syntax of the tag. When the developer looks at it they may not go with what you suggest exactly, but it's always helpful to have a suggestion to get the creative juices flowing. :)

 

Finally, hit submit.