[Koha-devel] General questions from a first-patcher

[Robin Sheat]

Philippe Blouin schreef op do 26-09-2013 om 16:08 [-0400]:
> First to present myself, I'm a new developper on Koha.  I work for
> inLibro, which has been a Koha proponent for a while now.

Hello and welcome!

> I will appreciate any and every constructive comments you can make on
> the following:
> http://bugs.koha-community.org/bugzilla3/show_bug.cgi?id=6201
> http://bugs.koha-community.org/bugzilla3/show_bug.cgi?id=8753
> http://bugs.koha-community.org/bugzilla3/show_bug.cgi?id=10951

They look pretty alright to me. One comment is in the format of your
commit comments, go for:

---------
Bug 1234 - fix the wotsit

The wotsit is broken and causes sparks to come out of the monitor. This
patch fixes the wotsit by screwing it in tighter.

Test plan:
1) Fromble the wotsit without this patch, note your house catches on
fire.
2) Apply the patch, and repeat step 1, noting that no fire engines
arrive this time. But there is an ice-cream truck outside.
---------

Having "Bug 1234" as the first thing allows tools like git bz to behave
a bit more automagically, and the whole first line should be a succinct
summary, with a blank line and more detail below. The first line should
be no more than 60 or 70 characters ideally (this is because it becomes
an email subject line, also forces you to make small, simple patches.)


> Questions:
> - I work with patches.  I used git-bz for one, and manual for the
> others.  Now how to I email to patch mailing list?  I just copy the
> content?  I comment it?  Do I add the [PATCH] in the header or some
> tool could have done all that for me?  (my server can't send email, so
> I'm not sure if git-bz should have done it)

Git can do it. I use:

git send-email --to=kpatches HEAD^

where ~/.git_aliases contains:

alias kpatches koha-patches at lists.koha-community.org

Git-bz is the best thing for interacting with bugzilla. It makes life
substantially easier. And if you format patches like above, just do:

git bz attach HEAD

and it'll figure out the bug to apply it to.

> - My local branch names are bug_XXXX from the master.  But I'm not
> sure if that must be commited.  Some wiki (contribute!) only talks
> about sending a patch.  Others
> (http://wiki.koha-community.org/wiki/Commit_messages) talk about it.
> Can you enlighten me?

Patches don't include branch names, call it whatever you like.
Personally, I tend to use things like:

bug1234-fix-the-wotsit

but that's totally personal preference. No one else will see it unless
they access your repo directly, which isn't so common.

Now go forth and write patches :D

-- 
Robin Sheat
Catalyst IT Ltd.
✆ +64 4 803 2204
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