Patches

From Scantegrity Wiki

Anyone can contribute to the Scantegrity voting system project, and that is probably why you are here! The standard mechanism for expressing the contributions is through a patch or diff file, which is simply a set of instructions showing what will be changed in the source code.

Thank you in advance for your patch. You are doing a good thing, and democracy will thank you for it!

Contents 1 Creating a Patch 2 Applying a Patch 3 Submitting a Patch 3.1 Guidelines

Creating a Patch

Once you have finished changing the sources to suit your needs, you can create a patch to share with the community. If you are using a GUI to access the subversion repository, consult your documentation on how to do this. You can create a patch using the command line subversion tools with the following instructions:

• Add all source files you created to the repository.

$ svn add file1
$ svn add file2

• Go to the top of your source tree.

• Run the SVN diff command.

$ svn diff > my.patch

Note: It is preferred your name your patches something relevant to what you changed (i.e. if you fixed a bug, name it fixed-b1234.patch).

Applying a Patch

If you want to apply someone's patch to your source tree:

• Download and save the patch to the top-level directory of your source tree.

• Apply the patch:

$ patch -p0 < joes.patch

Again, if you are using a GUI to access the repository, you should consult the documentation for how to do apply patches.

Submitting a Patch

Patches must be reviewed by the community. When your patch is accepted, a developer with commit permissions will add your patch to the repository.

The general procedure is to mail patches to dev@scantegrity.org, starting the subject line with [PATCH]. Here are some examples:

  $ Subj: [PATCH] fix for infinite printing problem in printer module
  $ Subj: [PATCH] fix for b1234, 

The b stands for bug.

Guidelines

Sometimes your patch will not be accepted immediately. You can minimize that chance by observing the following guidelines:

• One coherent change per patch. Please do not submit patches that fix multiple issues. You can always submit another patch.
• Include a concise description of what your patch does, and include a logical title of what your patch is about. If your patch fixes a known issue or bug, please include it as a link in the text and/or as a reference in the header.
• If you add a new feature, give complete details about it, as well as a rationale for why it will not affect the rest of the system.
• Obey the Coding Standards.
• Make sure it passes Testing, doesn't break another component, and that everything still compiles.
• Add a test to the testing utility for your patch.