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How to submit patches

eSNACC has a development email list hosted at [email protected] and the archives can be found at http://mail.esnacc.org/mailman/listinfo/dev

Send patch changes as emails to the development mailing list; one patch per email, please.

If you are using git, then git format-patch does most of the work described below for you.

Before you start

Before you send patches, make sure that each patch makes sense. This means that your patch should:

  • Not break anything. The best way to check this is to make a clean build with your patch applied; run the various scripts included and ensure that nothing crashes. (This is a good first order test)

  • Make one concise, logical change. Avoid grouping lots of unrelated changes together.

  • Update any documentation when new features are added.

Testing your patch is important. To that end, always run at least make check before submitting a patch. The best thing to do is use ./configure --enable-code-coverage followed by make check-code-coverage, and ensure that the code you are posting has been tested.

Email Subject

The subject line of your email should be in the following format: [TYPE <n>/<m>] FOO: <summary>

  • TYPE specifies the kind of change you are posting. The type "RFC" indicates a patch which is a "Request For Comments," and will never be applied to the tree. "PATCH" is the normal type of a changeset, which if accepted will be applied to the tree.

  • <n>/<m> indicates that this is the nth of a series of m changesets. It helps reviewers to read patches in the correct order. You may omit this prefix if you are sending only one changeset.

  • FOO should either be a broad area of esnacc (compiler, documentation, automake, etc.), or a specific file.

  • <summary> briefly describes the change.

The subject, minus the [TYPE <n>/<m>] prefix, becomes the first line of the commit's change log message.

Description

The body of the email should start with a more thorough description of the change. This becomes the body of the commit message, following the subject. There is no need to duplicate the summary given in the subject.

Please limit lines in the description to no more than 79 characters in width.

The description should include:

  • The rationale for the change.

  • Design description and rationale (but this might be better added as code comments).

  • Testing that you performed (or testing that should be done but you could not for whatever reason).

  • Tags (see below).

There is no need to describe what the patch actually changed, if the reader can see it for himself.

Developer's Certificate of Origin

To help track the author of a patch as well as the submission chain, and be clear that the developer has authority to submit a patch for inclusion in Enhanced SNACC please sign off your work. The sign off certifies the following:

Developer's Certificate of Origin 1.1

By making a contribution to this project, I certify that:

(a) The contribution was created in whole or in part by me and I
    have the right to submit it under the open source license
    indicated in the file; or

(b) The contribution is based upon previous work that, to the best
    of my knowledge, is covered under an appropriate open source
    license and I have the right under that license to submit that
    work with modifications, whether created in whole or in part
    by me, under the same open source license (unless I am
    permitted to submit under a different license), as indicated
    in the file; or

(c) The contribution was provided directly to me by some other
    person who certified (a), (b) or (c) and I have not modified
    it.

(d) I understand and agree that this project and the contribution
    are public and that a record of the contribution (including all
    personal information I submit with it, including my sign-off) is
    maintained indefinitely and may be redistributed consistent with
    this project or the open source license(s) involved.

Patch Signing Tags

The Signed-off-by tag indicates that you were directly involved in the generation of this patch, either by producing the code, or by influencing it heavily. Signing off on a change indicates that you take direct responsibility for that change.

The Acked-by tag indicates that you acknowledge the change. It indicates that you have read the change, understood it, and believe it to be acceptable for inclusion in the development tree. Acknowledgement usually implies that you have done a cursory build with the patch. The Reviewed-by tag means is the same as the Acked-by but does not imply you have built the change.

The Tested-by tag indicates anyone who has applied the code change to their tree, compiled with the change, and executed the functionality being manipulated.

The Reported-by tag indicates a user that was responsible for reporting a bug in the code.

Comments

If you want to include any comments in your email that should not be part of the commit's change log message, put them after the description, separated by a line that contains just ---. It may be helpful to include a diffstat here for changes that touch multiple files.

Patch

The patch should be in the body of the email following the description, separated by a blank line.

Patches should be in diff -up format. We recommend that you use Git to produce your patches, in which case you should use the -M -C options to git diff (or other Git tools) if your patch renames or copies files. Quilt (http://savannah.nongnu.org/projects/quilt) might be useful if you do not want to use Git.

Patches should be inline in the email message. Some email clients corrupt white space or wrap lines in patches. There are hints on how to configure many email clients to avoid this problem at: http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux-2.6.git;a=blob_plain;f=Documentation/email-clients.txt If you cannot convince your email client not to mangle patches, then sending the patch as an attachment is a second choice.