Re: [gnome-love]Patch and a question

[Chema Celorio <chema ximian com>]

Kevin Vandersloot wrote:
>
...
> My
> queston is what is the proper way to do the diffs?

The best way to do diffs is agains the cvs. You only need
to do :

cvs -z3 diff -RN -u5 > ../diffs/name_of_patch.diff

the R & N include in the diff added and removed files,
the -u sets the diff to unified format with 5 lines of 
context. If you ever need to add a file, make sure you
do a "cvs -z3 add myfile.txt" or "cvs -z3 delete myfile.txt"
this will include it in the patch.

Make sure the patch is done in the root directory of the 
module, this avoids problems for the maintainers.

> I know that gnome-libs has a stable
> branch, but how do I find what is the name of that branch ( or in
> general any branch )?

you can go to http://developer.gnome.org/tools/cvs.html
to see what the stable branches are. If you have any branch
of a given module you can do :

cvs status -v Makefile.am

it will show all the tags and branches of a specific file,
here i use Makefile.am which will be in all branches from
the start.

For example :

[chema@sarados gnome-libs]$ cvs status -v Makefile.am
===================================================================
File: Makefile.am       Status: Up-to-date

   Working revision:    1.75
   Repository revision: 1.75    /cvs/gnome/gnome-libs/Makefile.am,v
   Sticky Tag:          (none)
   Sticky Date:         (none)
   Sticky Options:      (none)


   Existing Tags:
        GNOME_LIBS_MODULE_SPLIT         (revision: 1.75)
        GNOME_LIBS_1_2_12               (revision: 1.49.4.1)
        ....
        gdk-pixbuf-port                 (branch: 1.49.8)
        hp-gdk-pixbuf                   (branch: 1.49.6)
        gnome-libs-1-0                  (branch: 1.49.4)
        gnome-libs                      (branch: 1.49.2)
        GNOME_LIBS_1_0_ANCHOR           (revision: 1.49)
        GNOME_LIBS_1_0_50               (revision: 1.49)
        GNOME_LIBS_1_0_42               (revision: 1.49)


> Is there a way to do a cvs diff without
> downloading the whole branch? 

I think you need to downlaod the whole branch, specially since
you want to compile and test your patch before sending it.

> Can I take my local file from
> gnome-libs-1.2.13 and do a diff with the CVS file. 

I think it can be done, but i have no clue on how to do it.

> I'm on a modem here
> so I don't feel like downloading the gnome-libs source from CVS at the
> moment. 

I am also on a slow modem, yes it sucks getting large packages from the
CVS.

The patch looks good, i will compile it and test it.


love,
Chema