Lots of people have asked what they could do to help out with req.  Here's
what I suggest:

Read over the wish.list file.  I've got most (but not all, unfortunately)
of the suggestions I've been sent listed there.

The items labelled (2) are the parts that I'm specifically working on now
for version 2.x.  This includes:
   internal organization, statuses, priorities, config files, etc.

This is basically involving a rewrite of req-operation, and eventually a
rewrite of q.  Because of that, any patches you make to those programs are
unlikely to work well with the code, so I'm discouraging development along
those lines.  (Unless you rewrite q before I get to it, which would be fine,
as long as it understands the new req file stucture which isn't quite complete
yet.)
  
Things I would love help/contributions on:
 - Anything in the wish.list file with a *.
 - Ideas or code for anything with a ?.
 - Suggestions on what else should be in there.
 - Discussion (on the req mailing list).

If you're going to work on an interface, I strongly suggest that you layer
it on top of 'req' and 'q'.  Both of those will have the same interface
(or compatible ones) in version 2, so your interface should continue to
work with future releases.

If you're going to work on something that goes and actually reads the files
(like 'report'), try to isolate the routines that read the actual requests.
While I don't expect the format of the files to change (much), I do
expect the directory layout to change.

If you have things you want or have to implement and get tired of waiting
for me to push out another release, then go right ahead and change the code.
I'd rather not have divergent versions of req out there, but if it's critical
to your job then I'm certainly not going to stop you... that's why it's
under the GNU copyleft.  On the other hand, if it's not critical, I really
would like for you to stick with my plans for the next few versions, just
so that there aren't 15 different kinds of req out there.  (req, xreq,
lucidreq, IDA req...)

If you're going to help out, you should get on the req workers mailing list
(which is req@ccs.neu.edu).  To subscribe, mail to majordomo@ccs.neu.edu,
with "subscribe req" in the body of your mail.

