The codebase that powers OpenStreetMap is older than any other Rails project that I work on. The first commit was in July 2006, and even then, that was just a port of an existing pre-rails system (hence why you might still see it referred to as “The Rails Port”)

It’s a solid, well-tested and battle-hardened codebase. It’s frequently updated too, particularly its dependencies. But if you know where to look, you can see its age. We have very few enduring contributors, with is surprising given its key position within the larger OpenStreetMap development community. So I’ve been taking a look to learn what I can do to help.

For someone just getting started with Rails, they’ll find that many parts of our code don’t match what’s in any of the books they read, or any the guides online. More experienced developers will spot a lot of things that were written years ago, and would nowadays been done differently. And for some of our developers, particularly our Summer of Code students, they are learning what to do by reading our existing code, so our idiosyncrasies accumulate.

I started trying to fix a minor bug with the diary entries and a bunch of things struck me as needing a thorough refresh. I started the process of refactoring the tests to use factories instead of fixtures – 2 down, 37 to go. I’ve started rewriting the controllers to use the standard rails CRUD method names. And I’ve made a list of plenty of other things that I’d like to tackle, all of which will help lower the barrier for new (and experienced) developers who want to get stuck into the openstreetmap-website code.

I hope that progress will snowball – as it becomes easier to contribute, more people will join in, and in turn help make it even easier to contribute.

But it’s time-consuming. I need help to share these projects around. If you’re interested, please get stuck in!