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Preparing Patches

Before you do

Before making a patch you should do the following:

  1. Check that modified documents are well-formed and valid.
  2. Spell check using American English.
  3. Check that the book is valid.
  4. Build the document and check the output for technical and linguistic problems.
Note
Rectify all problems before submitting your patch. Only patches without problems will be applied. Problems will be rejected back to the creator for rectification.

Make a Patch

Preparing a patch is easy. You can make a patch for a single file or a group of files that have been modified.

To create a patch for a group of files:

  1. Change the present working directory to the root of your working copy.

  2. Issue the svn update command.

    This updates your working copy with changes from the repository. Check for conflicts and resolve them.

  3. Issue the svn status command.

    This shows the status of files. Ensure that all conflicts are resolved.

  4. Issue the command svn diff > diffname.txt

    This creates the file "diffname.txt," which contains the differences between the working copy and repository revisions of the modified files.

To create a patch for specific file:

  1. Change the present working directory to the directory containing the modified file.

  2. Issue the svn update filename.xml command.

    This updates the specific working copy file with changes from the repository. Check for conflicts and resolve them.

  3. Issue the command svn diff workingfile.xml > filename.xml.diff

    This creates the file "filename.xml.diff," which contains the differences between the working copy and repository revisions of the modified file.

For more information about working with SVN, see Version Control with Subversion.

Note
The naming convention of the two patches is important. It helps commiters see at a glance whether a patch will effect multiple files or a single file.

Submitting a Patch

With the exception of comitters, all patches are submitted through our issue tracker as attachments to an issue ticket. Please do not post attachments to the mail list. A comitter with permissions will apply the patch after testing. If the patch has special testing requirements, attach a file that enables testing and/or explain how to test.