# Patches 




We recently switched to git as Version Control System (VCS) so the following information is out-of-date.  Look [here](TypicalGitUsage) for further instructions how to get the repository and how to submit patches! 
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Submitting patches (or diffs) is the usual way of contributing code to DragonFly BSD. All submissions to the project should go to the submit mailing list (http://www.dragonflybsd.org/main/forums.cgi). When you submit a patch please include a description of what has been changed.

Making patches when you only have a copy of the source



Let's say you just installed DragonFly BSD and you notice a problem in /bin/cat. Since you have /usr/src sync'ed with the main CVS repository. You go into /usr/src/bin/cat and make your modifications. But now what? Well here is what you can do. But next time try the procdure in the next section. :-)



   1. Copy your version of cat into /usr/src/bin/cat.local

   2. Run cvsup to resync your source tree back to a clean state.

   3. Then run diff -ru cat cat.local and submit a patch to the mailing list (with a short description on what you did) 

     

    root# cp -r /usr/src/bin/cat /usr/src/bin/cat.local

    root# cd /usr/src/bin

    root# diff -ru cat cat.local > usr.bin.cat.patch



 

## Making patches when you have a copy of the repository 

  1. Get a copy of the CVS repository

  2. Check out a copy of the source from that CVS repository

  3. Edit the code

  4. Generate a patch with cvs diff



## cvsps 



I use cvsps 1.3.3 to monitor and extract patchsets from the FreeBSD CVS repository. This utility can be found in /usr/pkgsrc/devel/cvsps.

Get a copy of both the FreeBSD and DragonFly cvs repositories.



## cvsup 

I use cvsup and the following two files to obtain a partial copy of the two projects (DragonFly and FreeBSD).

     

    % cat dfly-supfile

    
*default host=cvsup.dragonflybsd.org

    *default base=/usr/home/okumoto/Work/make

    *default prefix=/usr/home/okumoto/Work/make/dfly-cvs

    *default release=cvs

    *default delete use-rel-suffix

    *default compress




     

    % cat fbsd-supfile

    
*default host=cvsup14.us.FreeBSD.org

    *default host=cvsup4.us.FreeBSD.org

    *default base=/usr/home/okumoto/Work/make

    *default prefix=/usr/home/okumoto/Work/make/fbsd-cvs

    *default release=cvs

    *default delete use-rel-suffix




Execute the following commands

     

    % cd /usr/home/okumoto/Work/make

    

    % mkdir fbsd-cvs

    % cvsup fbsd-supfile -c fbsd-sup -i src/usr.bin/make

    

    % mkdir dfly-cvs

    % cvsup dfly-supfile -c dfly-sup -i src/usr.bin/make



This should result in two small cvs repositories that only contain source for usr.bin/make, and which will update quickly.

Create working directories by checking out the utility you want to work on.



The cvs program wants to have a CVSROOT directory so we just create an empty directory. You can use the -R option to cvs, but that prevents you from making your own tags, or checking in stuff into your local repository copy.



     

    % mkdir -p fbsd-cvs/src/usr.bin/CVSROOT            

    % mkdir -p fbsd-src

    % (cd fbsd-src; cvs -d ${PWD}/fbsd-cvs/src/usr.bin co make)   

    

    % mkdir -p dfly-cvs/src/usr.bin/CVSROOT 

    % mkdir -p dfly-src

    % (cd dfly-src; cvs -d ${PWD}/dfly-cvs/src/usr.bin co make)   



This should result in a check out of the most current version of make from each project.

Use cvsps to extract a change log from the cvs working directory



Using cvsps you can extract a patch history.

     

    % cd dfly-src/make

    % cvsps | less





## Patch History Example 

From change log history extract a patch.

     

    % cvsps -s 49-50 > patch-XXX



Submit patch :-)