The amount of patches in the patches/ folder in PTXdist has grown over
the years, and for most of them it is hard to track whether they have
already been applied upstream, or denied by the maintainer, or if they
are otherwise inappropriate for upstream submission. To simplify the
migration process to a new package version, any patches should include
appropriate documentation about their relation to the upstream source.
the Yocto Project already has a syntax for that; let's re-use that for
PTXdist too. This way patches can also easily be cherry-picked between
the two projects.

Signed-off-by: Roland Hieber <[email protected]>
---
 doc/contributing.rst | 10 ++++++++++
 1 file changed, 10 insertions(+)

diff --git a/doc/contributing.rst b/doc/contributing.rst
index 63da67802222..1b0b0804b6ce 100644
--- a/doc/contributing.rst
+++ b/doc/contributing.rst
@@ -145,6 +145,16 @@ in mind:
    ``_LICENSE`` variable if necessary.
    Often the difference is only in the copyright year, but in any case, 
describe
    the changes in the license file when sending your patch!
+-  When adding new patches to a package (in ``patches/``), these patches must
+   carry ``Upstream-Status:`` pseudo-headers to track the state of the patches
+   and give more context for the change in relation to the upstream source.
+   Refer to `Yocto Project's documentation <patch-upstream-status_>`_ regarding
+   the syntax of these pseudo-headers. (Note: instead of the ``oe specific``
+   keyword, use ``ptxdist specific``.)
+
+   Adding such headers for existing patches is good practise, but not required.
+
+.. _patch-upstream-status: 
https://docs.yoctoproject.org/contributor-guide/recipe-style-guide.html#patch-upstream-status
 
 Misc
 ~~~~
-- 
2.39.5


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