Re: Hurdle to Contributing: Uploading Patches process

Daniel O'Connor wrote: > Problem: > I'm not a hugely competent user of CVS; and there are no windows clients > which make it easy (TortoiseCVS doesn't quite cut it). I'm fairly good with > SVN, but only because of the GUI side of it. In TortoiseCVS, right-click, then select the deeper submenu (I think it is CVS Options) and choose "Make Patch" - this is actually easier than in unix in my opinion. If you do have a cvs command line, you can also make the patch via cvs diff -u > patch.diff in windows. > I've fixed something, and I want to upload a patch - I've generated it by > using diff (ie, from > http://gnuwin32.sourceforge.net/packages/diffutils.htm). > Unfortunately, because it's not against a working copy; the patch is > automatically rejected as invalid. rejected where? pear.php.net doesn't know anything about where the patch comes from, so if it is rejecting it, there is another reason. Perhaps the rejection error message sucks. > This is a huge hurdle for contributing - I have to fight with CVS from the > command line, guess my way through http://www.php.net/anoncvs.phpÇŠ¯ > à¿¿©BÔÆ€µ ; and > finally, after all of that, fail to get a working copy out which I can use > to generate a patch. The error messages aren't clear either. > > What do you all think of: > > - Additional, pear specific instructions on getting a CVS checkout, > aimed at windows users ("I'm afraid of the command line" types) A good idea > - Very clear instructions on generating a patch from CVS A good idea > - Looser restrictions on what's allowed as a patch. If CVS bits and > pieces can be seen in the file, hurray, but don't make it a requirement > (text/plain only plus a captcha or similar should be enough, shouldn't > it?) The only requirement right now is that the file end in .patch or .diff and that it be less than 20k in size (I think), but I'd say moving to simply text/plain would be good. This has been suggested before, but nobody has implemented it yet (or opened a feature request for this change) > - A bit of UI review + attention around the uploading a patch features > of pearweb - it's a little rough because it's so new. patches welcome *cough*. Suggestions as specific as those above would be helpful as well. There has been some limited feedback on patch creation that has helped to streamline the process, and there is an open request to strike through old patches, but any suggestions are welcome. The worst that could happen is we don't implement it. Thanks for taking the time to write about this, glad to see you like the feature enough to do a serious critique of it, I must have done something right :) Greg