Next: , Previous: Building the Development Sources, Up: Contributing Guidelines


D.3 Basics of Generating a Changeset

The preferable form of contribution is creating a Mercurial changeset and submit it to the bug or patch trackers1. Mercurial is the source code management system currently used to develop Octave. Other forms of contributions (e.g., simple diff patches) are also acceptable, but they slow down the review process. If you want to make more contributions, you should really get familiar with Mercurial. A good place to start is http://www.selenic.com/mercurial/wiki/index.cgi/Tutorial. There you will also find help how to install Mercurial.

A simple contribution sequence could look like this:

     hg clone http://www.octave.org/hg/octave
                                  # make a local copy of the octave
                                  # source repository
     cd octave
     # change some sources...
     hg commit -m "make Octave the coolest software ever"
                                  # commit the changeset into your
                                  # local repository
     hg export -o ../cool.diff tip
                                  # export the changeset to a diff
                                  # file
     # attach ../cool.diff to your bug report

You may want to get familiar with Mercurial queues to manage your changesets. Here is a slightly more complex example using Mercurial queues, where work on two unrelated changesets is done in parallel and one of the changesets is updated after discussion on the bug tracker:

     hg qnew nasty_bug            # create a new patch
     # change sources...
     hg qref                      # save the changes into the patch
     # change even more...
     hg qref -m "solution to nasty bug!"
                                  # save again with commit message
     hg export -o ../nasty.diff tip
                                  # export the patch
     # attach ../nasty.diff to your bug report
     hg qpop                      # undo the application of the patch
                                  # and remove the changes from the
                                  # source tree
     hg qnew doc_improvements     # create an unrelated patch
     # change doc sources...
     hg qref -m "could not find myfav.m in the doc"
                                  # save the changes into the patch
     hg export -o ../doc.diff tip
                                  # export the second patch
     # attach ../doc.diff to your bug report
     hg qpop
     # discussion in the bug tracker ...
     hg qpush nasty_bug           # apply the patch again
     # change sources yet again ...
     hg qref
     hg export -o ../nasty2.diff tip
     # attach ../nasty2.diff to your bug report

Footnotes

[1] Please use the patch tracker only for patches which add new features. If you have a patch to submit that fixes a bug, you should use the bug tracker instead.