Diff for "ContributingChanges"

Contributing changes to Mercurial

Matt is trying to streamline his fairly complex process of merging ["Patch"]es from the MailingList. So please try to do the following:

• Use hg export or the patchbomb script where possible.

  • This will get your name in the changelog without any extra editing on his part.
• Make sure your description is complete.

  • If using hg export, he wants the description in the exported patch.

• Make sure your description starts with a reasonable one-line summary.
• Send only one patch per email, as Matt's tools and processes assume this.

Some other useful guidelines:

• In general, think of ["Mercurial"] as following a process similar to KernelPractice.

• ["Serve"] a ["Repository"] over HTTP that contains your changes, so Matt only needs to ["Pull"] from it if he likes the changes.

• Send your changes as ["Patch"]es to the MailingList anyway, so other people on the mailing list can review what you're doing.

• If you are emailing a ["Patch"] directly to Matt, copy the MailingList.

• Make sure the ["Patch"]es you send apply cleanly against the current ["Tip"].

• Inline ["Patch"]es are preferable to MIME-attached copies of ["Patch"]es, because many mailers cannot quote attachments. Inline patches are thus easier to review. Be warned that many mailers will by default screw up the white space of inline ["Patch"]es, so they will not apply cleanly. This is usually easy to work around, for example by using the patchbomb script.

• Each ["Patch"] should make sense in and of itself, and not contain pieces of unrelated stuff that you noticed and decided to fix up.

• Follow the prevailing coding style in the code you're modifying, not what you think it ought to be.

• Patches should not contain tab characters.
• Patches should not contain trailing white space.
• If you are cleaning up white space, do it in a self-contained patch that contains no functional changes.