Recipe for committing contributions

Fri, 28 Oct 2005 06:39:26 -0700

The attached html file contains a recipe/checklist that I find useful when committing patches. I was just wondering if this is something that you other guys would find useful as well. If so, we could perhaps make it a Wiki page or publish it in some other way. You may not agree on everything, or there may be some issues I haven't though of; feel free to comment on that. The intention of the document is to make sure that things go smoothly and you don't break the build. 

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Oyvind Bakksjo
Sun Microsystems, Database Technology Group
Trondheim, Norway
http://weblogs.java.net/blog/bakksjo/
Title: Committing patches

Committing patches to the Derby Subversion Repository

Committing contributions from others is not as straightforward as one might think. This mainly stems from the fact that there is an svn diff command, but there is no svn patch command (lack of symmetry - see this and this Subversion issue). There are a number of things to remember; if not done carefully, you might end up doing partial commits that may break the build. This page attempts to give a recipe for safely committing code contributions.

  1. Make sure you have a clean sandbox:
    1. In the trunk directory, run svn status - it should not list anything. If it does, you may want to run svn revert -R . to remove all local modifications, or use/check out a different sandbox.
    2. Run ant clobber.
  2. Check your sandbox' svn revision with svn info.
  3. Align you sandbox' svn revision with the patch's.
    1. If the contributor has indicated on which revision the patch was created (with svn diff), run svn update -r REVISION.
    2. Otherwise, you may choose to run svn update -r { DATE }, using the date of the contribution of the patch. NOTE: svn is very picky about date formats. See http://svnbook.red-bean.com/en/1.0/ch03s03.html and scan down for valid date formats.
    3. If you think there has been no changes in the patch's area since it was contributed, you can try on the head: svn update.
  4. Apply the patch in the trunk directory: patch -p0 < PATCH_FILE.
  5. Make sure there were no conflicts when applying the patch. On unix, you can run find . -name "*.rej" -print. If a *.rej file is found, you should either resolve the conflict or ask the submitter to submit a new patch against the newest revision. If you omit this step, you'll still catch this problem before committing (when you compare your svn status output to the contributor's), but it's a good idea to catch this early on.
  6. Run svn status
  7. Newly added files will show up with ?, indicating that Subversion does not know anything about them. You will have to add these yourself using svn add.
  8. You will have to set svn properties for added files. In particular for all text files. Run svn propset svn:eol-style native FILE(S). If you have your subversion configuration setting this should be done automatically. Add this list to your ~/.subversion/config file, as described in http://www.apache.org/dev/version-control.html.
  9. Now compare your sandbox to the contributor's: run svn status | diff - CONTRIBUTOR'S_SVN_STATUS_FILE. This should be clean, except that the ordering may be different. You can overcome this by sorting both your own svn status output and the contributor's file with sort before comparing: svn status | sort > MY_SVN_STATUS_FILE; cat CONTRIBUTOR'S_SVN_STATUS_FILE | sort | diff - MY_SVN_STATUS_FILE.
    1. If the svn status output was made on Windows vs. Unix, you may need to adjust formatting such as spacing and forward versus backward slashes.
    2. If the diff contains new, empty files, patch will not create them for you; you will have to create them yourself using touch FILENAME.
      1. After creating such new, empty files, you will have to add them, too, with svn add (and set the correct svn properties).
  10. By now your svn status should be equal to the contributor's. Now compare the diff by running svn diff | diff - PATCH_FILE.
  11. The diffs you see could be the following:
    1. Revision numbers, if your sandbox was not aligned with the contributor's (see above)
    2. Subversion file properties: You will have to set svn properties for added files (see above). Do not automatically take for granted the properties in the contributor's patch file, he/she may have got it wrong; use your own judgement.
    3. Actual code diffs: Inspect and figure out what/why.
      1. Files may be examined in different order by svn diff on your machine and the contributor's; not sure if there's anything we can do about that.
  12. Update to the head with svn update. Check that there are no conflicts.
  13. Build the code with ant all and ant buildjars.
  14. Run tests if you are not confident that the contributor's/reviewer's actions are sufficient.
    1. Check that tests pass. If they do not:
      1. Check the nightly/tinderbox for the same failure.
      2. Verify that the failure is not caused by the patch.
  15. Commit the patch with svn commit. Use either --message, --file or --editor-cmd
    1. Include the following in the commit message:
      1. The ID of the JIRA issue. Make sure you use the format DERBY-NNN so that JIRA picks it up.
      2. Some text explaining what the patch does (typically snipped from the JIRA issue).
      3. The contributor's name/email.
  16. Send out an email to let people know you have committed the patch.

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