Submitting patches

[Ger]

The Get Involved page says that all patches should be submitted using Git diffs. I understand that using diffs reduce the workload for reviewing the patches. However, it increases the barrier for a large part of the community to provide a patch in the first place. I think there are many people out there that would like to provide a patch, but choose not to do so since they don't have any expercience using Git and don't want to go through the hassle of installing it, understanding it and then finally being able to submit a patch.

Should it be an idea to create a "diff creator" tool, for people that are experienced with phpBB but not with Git? They could submit a MODX file, which is installed on the latest repo of phpBB and next a diff is automatically created. The user can check it again (thus maybe learning a bit more) and submit it as usual.

Another idea can be that this work is done by one of the team members (nice work for a junior dev?), but this indeed increases the workload.

The gain in this system I think is that the development of phpBB is sped up since a lot more people will become able to submit patches. That will also decrease the overall work load for the development team, I recon.

What do the devs think about this?

[Oleg]

I am all for a modx to diff translator, for an entirely unrelated reason (so that I may apply phpbb modifications faster).

However, creating diffs is really not difficult. Diffs between two trees may be obtained via

Code: Select all

diff -urN old-path new-path

. On a windows machine this could be done via cygwin, and winmerge manual leads me to think it can be done via a gui tool as well.

For simple changes the diff does not have to be a git diff. A plain old diff against a released version would work. For more complicated changes however multiple changesets/commits/diffs may be requested due to the difficulty of reviewing huge diffs. If a reviewer requests some changes to be made then those typically should be in a diff/changeset/commit by themselves so that it is easy to verify that 1) all requested changes have been made, and 2) nothing else was inadvertently changed.

I'm sure a guide to help potential contributors create diffs with an easy-to-use tool would be appreciated.

[Ger]

However, creating diffs is really not difficult. Diffs between two trees may be obtained via

Code: Select all

diff -urN old-path new-path

. On a windows machine this could be done via cygwin, and winmerge manual leads me to think it can be done via a gui tool as well.

While that's probably true (but while reading, I didn't really see it), it does require the user to learn yet anotother system, thereby making it harder to be able to contribute.

[bantu]

Small patches can certainly also be provided in MODX format or MOD format. In fact, some have already been provided in MOD format inline in the ticket description. Bigger patches should at least be provided as diffs because that format can be applied easily compared to MOD format. If you want to earn brownie points, provide patches as git diffs or even better as git branches with the correct commit message(s).

[Ger]

Small patches can certainly also be provided in MODX format or MOD format. In fact, some have already been provided in MOD format inline in the ticket description.

Ah, ok. I didn't know that, and since it says on the "Get involved"-page that it's not allowed, I didn't look any further actually.

The question was mostly about small patches, of course, so it's fine like this.