Re: Problem with Coreutils Contribution Guidelines

[Jim Meyering]

Nikolas Kallis wrote:
> There is a problem with the Coreutils Contribution Guidelines:
>
> http://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/coreutils.git/tree/HACKING
>
> I got up to 'Your first commit: the quick and dirty way' and executed
> the command 'git format-patch --stdout -1 > DIFF', and got the error
> message "fatal: Not a git repository (or any of the parent
> directories): .git".
>
> It seems I got this error message because I executed the command from
> my home directory, and figured the command needed to be ran inside the
> coreutils/ directory.
>
> Executing such a command is probably common knowledge for people whom
> use Git frequently, however this is only my second instance using it
> and so I didn't know.
>
> The instructions should specify the command needs to be executed from
> the coreutils/ directory, or perhaps its a better idea to make the
> document specify to enter the coreutils/ directory first, as I suspect
> most - if not all commands in the instructions should generally be
> executed inside the coreutils/ directory.
> This will help put the instructions in line with implementation.

Thanks.
I've added the one-line summary and the "ChangeLog entry"
as the body of the git commit log message for you.
Normally I would require a contributor to do that, but since
you're new to this business, you get this one for free.

For your info, I would have preferred it if you had
sent me the following (the output of that git format-patch
command you mention above):

>From aca3d5ebc62265401e11a53fe754fcad7f50ce25 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: Nikolas Kallis <address@hidden>
Date: Sat, 13 Oct 2012 19:52:33 +0200
Subject: [PATCH] doc: improve HACKING guidelines

* HACKING: Add "cd coreutils" after the git clone command.
---
 HACKING | 1 +
 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+)

diff --git a/HACKING b/HACKING
index f8d3a9b..de8cd7b 100644
--- a/HACKING
+++ b/HACKING
@@ -21,6 +21,7 @@ Base any changes you make on the latest upstream sources.
 You can get a copy of the latest with this command:

     git clone git://git.sv.gnu.org/coreutils
+    cd coreutils

 That downloads the entire repository, including revision control history
 dating back to 1991.  The repository (the part you download, and which
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1.8.0.rc2