Yesterday user cloke asked whether there is an ‘array’ attribute available for DS.attr() emberjs/data. I looked at the code and haven’t seen this functionality. Browsing through the Issues and Pull Requests also left no hint that somebody already implemented this. So I opened TextMate, did a git checkout -b add_array_attr, looked at the existing tests to see how the other attributes are tested, created new ones for the ‘array’ functionality and implemented it. Afterwards I ran the tests via bundle exec rackup and navigating to http://localhost:9292/tests/index.html?packages=all. All tests passed, so I updated the README to give a hint about the new attribute type. Finally I added my modifications, pushed to my fork on GitHub and opened a Pull Request.

I wasn’t sure wether my explanation about the added attribute type in the README was accurate so I simply started a discussion on the diff which is shown directly inside the Pull Request. A few hours later wycats closed the request and commented that my added implementation does not mark a record as dirty and therefore it is not merged in.

So why am I writing a post about this? Well: Open Source on GitHub or development in general on GitHub is just great!! I love it! There is absolutely no barrier for a developer to contribute to a project. Just hack around, open a Pull Request and start a discussion. If it gets merged, fine. If not, thats fine too! Just do it and see what happens. GitHub put back the fun in contributing to Open Source projects!