[Debian-sf-devel] Re: Patch files for you to check out

[Roland Mas]

[Debian-sf-devel: Rober Lamoureux has contacted me in private,
proposing help.  He just sent me two patches.]

Lamoureux, Robert (2002-10-21 13:40:35 -0400) :

> Roland,
>
> If you wouldn't mind helping me in getting my patch efforts aligned
> with proper etiquette, I would appreciate it.

  Certainly.  I hope you don't mind my answering in public, since it
may hopefully be of help to other potential contributors.

> I have patched several files that have enabled the Peer Ratings to
> work.

  That's cool.  We hadn't really looked at it yet.

> I have attached the 3 patch files here for your observation.

  I seem to only see 2 of them (calculate_user_metric.patch and
project_weekly_metric.patch)...  Forgot the third one?

> Can you let me know if I did this properly?  Also, how do I do this
> more formally in the future.

  The diffs are fine, but some info is missing (although it can be
guessed): what version you're working on.  The rest of your message
implies that you're working on the 2.6 "branch" (although it is the
trunk, actually).  The file names are in the name of the patches,
which is a bit awkward.  And I personnally prefer unified diffs, but I
can handle other types :-).  Also, providing a debian/changelog entry
would be cool.

  Although patches are already easy to apply, making them even easier
would be a nice help to us lazy programmers.  My personal preference
is to use the method described on the small HOWTO we have written[1].
Basically, it boils down to "cvs diff -urN".  This includes all the
changes in one file, along with the version of the changed files.  Oh,
and if someone commits something to CVS before your patch is applied,
you can run "cvs update" and then re-run the diff command, which will
automatically update the patch so that it applies to the latest
version of the patched file.

  Now, to publish the patch, either send it to this list or use the
Savannah patch tracker[2].

> Once you verify that it works, you must make sure that the cron job
> runs.  I have found some issues with the files that get loaded into
> /etc/cron.d.  It seems that many of the cron jobs are duplicated
> between the 'sourceforge' cron file and the 'sourceforge-???' cron
> files.  For example, the sourceforge-db-postgresql cron file has
> almost all the entries found in the 'sourceforge' cron file.
> Certainly, we don't want the jobs running twice.  The second issue
> is the 'sourceforge' cron file, which seems to be a superset of the
> 'sourceforge-db-postgresql' cron file, has bugs in the scripts
> (compare the include_path directive between the two files.

  Okay, I'll take a look at that.  The problem is that we used to have
only one package named "sourceforge" for 2.5, and it has now been
split into several sub-packages.  The crontab may not have been
completely split, and the one for the "sourceforge" package may not
have been cleaned.

> That all being said, I couldn't find the 'sourceforge' cron file in
> the source tree I downloaded and built.

  Hm.  Well, that's normal, it's been removed.  Now, why it hasn't
been removed on your installation is another problem.  I'll have to
make sure that file is removed.

> Let me know how I did with this.

  Quite fine for a first start.  Keep'em coming :-)

[1] http://www.nongnu.org/debian-sf/how_to_build.html
[2] https://savannah.nongnu.org/patch/?group=debian-sf

Roland.
-- 
Roland Mas

Meaning lies as much / In the mind of the reader / As in the haiku
  -- in Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid (Douglas Hofstadter)