Chapter 11. Submitting a patch to the project

Abstract

How to submit a patch to the project (assumes you do not have a CVS account).

Finding a person to send the patch to

Since ReactOS does not have a definite maintainer for each section of the code, you should mail ros-kernel and ask for someone to accept the patch.

Test your patch

  • Thoroughly check that your change works as intended.
  • Test your changes with the latest code from CVS. Something may have changed in the latest code that either breaks your change or causes your change to break something else.
  • Make sure that ReactOS can still boot and that any applications or systems that may be affected by your change still run properly.

Preparing the patch

  • Make sure that your patch is against the latest code from CVS.
  • Where you have made changes to an existing source file, you will use diff to obtain a file that contains only the changes that you have made:
    • Make sure you have cvs and diff on your system (cvs.exe and diff.exe on Windows). If you use Windows and don't have these tools, you can obtain WinCVS from http://www.wincvs.org/ (remember to put the WinCVS directory in your path).
    • To create the patch:
      cvs diff -up file1 file2 > mypatch.diff
      
    • If you have changed many files, then you can avoid typing each filename by doing this:
      cd <top-directory-for-all-changed-files>
      cvs diff -up > mypatch.diff
      
  • Zip all new files and diffs to existing files and send them to the person that will commit the changes to CVS.