Re: Patches [was: Re: [gnome-love] Re: [gnome-love]Wow.]

[Telsa Gwynne <hobbit aloss ukuu org uk>]

On Thu, May 24, 2001 at 12:43:48AM -0500 or thereabouts, Dan Mueth wrote:
> I usually go to the top level of the module and do a diff against what is
> in CVS:
>
>     cvs diff -uRN > CHANGES
>
> This produces a very readable patch....
[snip]
> I'm not sure if these sort of things are documented anywhere.  If not,
> perhaps we should discuss this in some introductory GNOME hacking document
> which discusses the tools and conventions.  Does anybody know if such a
> document exists?

I believe the closest we have is the Programming Guidelines in
gnome-docu/white-papers/

(They're in docbook when you check them out of CVS: run db2html on the
.sgml file you care about and you'll get a new subdirectory with html
output.)

Preamble from it: 

   This article contains several guidelines and suggestions for GNOME
   programmers, as well as certain policies that should be followed when
   writing GNOME programs. This is intended for programmers to know about
   the GNOME development process and its philosophy. GNOME is a team
   effort, so it will be useful for programmers to know "the way things
   are done".

Some updates are required to it currently, though. The naming 
conventions section doesn't mention Bonobo naming conventions
yet, for example. (Unless that's specifically in the Bonobo docs?)

The "best way to produce a patch" could easily fit into the 
"Modifying other people's code" section. 

Telsa