[Gnumed-devel] GNUmed plugin development - how to share your work

[Sebastian Hilbert]

Hi all,

In the last article I shared my work by posting a few screenshots and a 
tarball for everyone to grab. However the ultimate goal is to get this 
included onto GNUmed's main code repository.

A while back the GNUmed project announced it made the switch from CVS to GIT. 
That means that it moved from a centralized repository (CVS head) to a 
distributed repository architecture. In short. There is no longer an 
'officical' or 'central' code repository to submit our plugin to.

However not all is lost. The most active coders share their so called GIT 
trees with the world so that is now the de facto standard. This is not carved 
into stone but since Karsten Hilbert has been making released based on his GIT 
tree this tree is the main tree for the time being.

What we need to do is ask him to merge our code into his tree so it will be 
part of the next releases. Same procedure is implemented for the Linux kernel 
where Linus Torvalds merges code from other developers and finally releases a 
new kernel.

There is one problem. I did not consider this when working on the plugin so I 
need to get my stuff straight and my hands dirty with GIT.

First I get a local copy of the 'main tree'. It is hosted at gitorious for 
everyone to grab. I grab a copy by cloning it. For that I create a 
subdirectory 'Sources' in my home directory and run the following command.

    git clone git://gitorious.org/gnumed/gnumed.git

Now I have a copy of the main tree which can be kept up to date by running the 
following commands.

    git checkout master
    git fetch

This gives us the latest code in the master branch. For our plugin it makes 
sense to create our own branch. This is done by the following command.

    git branch add-echo-xml

To list all available branches use:

    git branch

It will output:

    *  add-echo-xml                                                             
                                                                                
                
    master   

The branch with the asterisk is the currently active one.  To switch to the 
master tree (e.g. for updates) use:

    git checkout master

To activate and develop in our own branch use this:

    git checkout add-echo-xml

It will do some magic and track all change we make to the existing and new 
files. It will find out that we change existing files, delete files or add 
files. Now is the time to add our previously created files from the tarball I 
talked about in the last article. Just copy them into the corresponding 
directories. We have to tell git about them so it can track the changes to 
them. This is done by adding the file once and commiting after a change. In 
the wxGladeWidgets directory we run:

    git add wxgCardiacEchoPluginPnl.py

In the wxg direcotory we run:

    git add wxgCardiacEchoPnl.wxg

In the wxpython directory we run:

    git add gmEchoWidgets.py

In the wxpython/gui directory we run:

    git add gmCardiacEchoPlugin.py

Finally we commit all this by:

    git commit

This will ask for a commit message which is a short message to keep track of 
your changes. Once done it will output:                                         
                                                                                
                                                  

    [add-echo-xml f0b2d35] - added new files for echo plugin                    
                                                                                
               
     4 files changed, 1196 insertions(+), 0 deletions(-)                        
                                                                                
               
     create mode 100755 
gnumed/gnumed/client/wxGladeWidgets/wxgCardiacEchoPluginPnl.py                  
                                                                       
     create mode 100644 gnumed/gnumed/client/wxg/wxgCardiacEchoPnl.wxg
     create mode 100644 gnumed/gnumed/client/wxpython/gmEchoWidgets.py
     create mode 100644 
gnumed/gnumed/client/wxpython/gui/gmCardiacEchoPlugin.py

Whenever we change files during developement we need to go through this (git 
branch add-echo-xml, git add, git commit) again. Next step will be to figure 
out how to offer these local changes for merging by the person doing releases.

Sebastian