FAQ: Contributing code. Django Software

Django Documentation, Release 1.5.12

The dynamically-generated admin site is ugly! How can I change it?

We like it, but if you don’t agree, you can modify the admin site’s presentation by editing the CSS stylesheet and/or associated image files. The site is built using semantic HTML and plenty of CSS hooks, so any changes you’d like to make should be possible by editing the stylesheet.

What browsers are supported for using the admin?

The admin provides a fully-functional experience to YUI’s A-grade browsers, with the notable exception of IE6, which is not supported.

There may be minor stylistic differences between supported browsers—for example, some browsers may not support rounded corners. These are considered acceptable variations in rendering.

FAQ: Contributing code

How can I get started contributing code to Django?

Thanks for asking! We’ve written an entire document devoted to this question. It’s titled

Contributing to Django .

I submitted a bug fix in the ticket system several weeks ago. Why are you ignoring my patch?

Don’t worry: We’re not ignoring you!

It’s important to understand there is a difference between “a ticket is being ignored” and “a ticket has not been attended to yet.” Django’s ticket system contains hundreds of open tickets, of various degrees of impact on end-user functionality, and Django’s developers have to review and prioritize.

On top of that: the people who work on Django are all volunteers. As a result, the amount of time that we have to work on the framework is limited and will vary from week to week depending on our spare time. If we’re busy, we may not be able to spend as much time on Django as we might want.

The best way to make sure tickets do not get hung up on the way to checkin is to make it dead easy, even for someone who may not be intimately familiar with that area of the code, to understand the problem and verify the fix:

• Are there clear instructions on how to reproduce the bug? If this touches a dependency (such as PIL), a contrib module, or a specific database, are those instructions clear enough even for someone not familiar with it?

• If there are several patches attached to the ticket, is it clear what each one does, which ones can be ignored and which matter?

• Does the patch include a unit test? If not, is there a very clear explanation why not? A test expresses succinctly what the problem is, and shows that the patch actually fixes it.

If your patch stands no chance of inclusion in Django, we won’t ignore it – we’ll just close the ticket. So if your ticket is still open, it doesn’t mean we’re ignoring you; it just means we haven’t had time to look at it yet.

When and how might I remind the core team of a patch I care about?

A polite, well-timed message to the mailing list is one way to get attention. To determine the right time, you need to keep an eye on the schedule. If you post your message when the core developers are trying to hit a feature deadline or manage a planning phase, you’re not going to get the sort of attention you require. However, if you draw attention to a

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