How To Submit Patches

Quick run-down of things that will make it more likely that your patch is accepted (outside of the Banter/CodingGuidelines):

Create a patch file

• Don't try to solve multiple problems in one patch -- not only will it make us reject the whole patch if one of the problems is poorly solved, it also makes it harder for us to evaluate what is solved by a particular change.
• In particular, don't try to clean up indentation, comments or the like. This will just make it harder for us to read. If you want to clean stuff up, do it in a separate patch.

• From the root of the banter directory (i.e., /home/user/projects/banter, not /home/user/projects/banter/Banter), type svn diff > name-of-your-patch.patch. This will create a name-of-your-patch.patch in the proper format. Use svn add <filename/directory> to add new files before executing svn diff to include new files into the patch file. Others should be able to apply your patch by navigating to the root of their banter directory and running patch -p0 < name-of-your-patch.patch.

• Make sure you base your patch off of the latest version in SVN, if possible.

Submitting the patch file

• Always look at your patch file in its entirety before submitting it. Make sure it doesn't include any non-related files (such as *.po translation files).

• Post the patch as an attachment to the appropriate bug report in bugzilla or your mail. This will ensure that vital spaces are retained.

• Your patch is less likely to be forgotten if put in a bug report rather than submitted through the Banter mailing list, as those can be efficiently searched for.

• Describing roughly how you solve the problem will make it easier to evaluate the patch.

(original text for this page taken from Tomboy/HowToSubmitPatches)