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# Patches 

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 lists"](http://www.dragonflybsd.org/main/forums.cgi) (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 

Step 1: Get a copy of the CVS repository
Step 2: Check out a copy of the source from that CVS repository
Step 3: Edit the code
Step 4: Generate a patch with cvs diff


# Using 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.** 

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

    
    cvs-src
    
    % 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

    
    src-usrbin


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



From change log history extract a patch.

    
    % cvsps -s 49-50 > patch-XXX


["Patch Set Example"](howtos/PatchSetExample)
 
Submit patch :-)