[pacman-dev] Submitting Patches

[Dan McGee]

On 10/24/07, Nagy Gabor <ngaba at bibl.u-szeged.hu> wrote:
> Hi!
> OK. I understood. From now on, I will send only "proper" git patches.
> But I'm sure that I will send much fewer patches than before. I thought,
> that my ugly/terrible/no-patch mails were a bit helpful (at least they
> were bug reports); but if you cannot decode the information from this:
> http://www.archlinux.org/pipermail/pacman-dev/2007-October/009655.html
> or from this:
> http://www.archlinux.org/pipermail/pacman-dev/2007-October/009666.html,
> I have the feeling, that you simply don't _want_ to decode it. Since
> _you_ have git access, I don't understand why I should create the patch
> instead of you, when I gave _all_ the needed information. Yes, I'm lazy;
> are you lazy too ;-)?

And here is where we think differently. No, I don't want to decode it.
If it is a problem that you think needs fixing, then test and fix it,
please. I don't want to mess up and fix it wrong, and I _really_ don't
want to spend duplicate time fixing something you have either already
fixed or can fix much quicker than me.

Since I have GIT access? Did you miss the concept of a _distributed_
version control system? Everyone has GIT access, this isn't CVS
anymore. You can commit a patch just as easily as I. The only
difference is that most people tend to follow the Arch Linux pacman
tree more so than your tree or my tree.

And guess what? A GIT patch gives all the needed information. So why
the hell should I have to run it though a translator? That is your
job.

> To tell the truth; I don't understand you. I tried to help you, but you
> prevent me from helping with this huge "officialdom". I have the
> feeling, that I should say thank you, that I'm allowed to send you
> patches instead of getting "thanks for your effort to help us improve
> pacman" responses (don't misunderstand me, I do it, because I _like_
> hacking it).

We share something in common then- we both like hacking on pacman. And
when you do contribute things back to the "official" tree, I will say
thanks. There is no trying to stand in your way with "officialdom"
here. You are standing in your own way by refusing to admit that
someone is going to have to do the work to clean up and format the
patch. That isn't my responsibility.

> So from now on I will create my patches with git-format-patch.

When you do this, I promise I'll be all eyes and review the patch. I
just can't deal with an attached patch followed by a note to fix this
and then a note that something else needs to be done first, etc.

> Bye, ngaba
>
> P.S.: Are we allowed to discuss things about development, or are we
> allowed to send patches only?

Of course! I only said that for emails that are supposed to be
patches, they have to be in the correct format. If you just want to
discuss something, examples in patch format are wonderful because
there is no ambiguity (if examples are needed at all). When the
discussion becomes a patch however, git-am should be able to deal with
it.