Re: Emacs contributions, C and Lisp

[David Kastrup]

address@hidden (Phillip Lord) writes:

> David Kastrup <address@hidden> writes:
>> I've never learnt working with Bzr and never checked out the Emacs
>> repository with it.
>>
>> That did not preclude me from sending the occasional patch to the list,
>> based on the Git mirror of the Emacs repository.
>
> etc/CONTRIBUTE doesn't mention this.

It states for the source code:

    * Getting the Source Code

    The latest version of Emacs can be downloaded using Bazaar from the
    Savannah web site.  It is important to write your patch based on the
    latest version.  If you start from an older version, your patch may be
    outdated (so that maintainers will have a hard time applying it), or
    changes in Emacs may have made your patch unnecessary.

    After you have downloaded the repository source, you should read the file
    INSTALL.REPO for build instructions (they differ to some extent from a
    normal build).

    Ref: http://savannah.gnu.org/projects/emacs

and that reference is equally valid for Bzr and Git.  For the patch, you
get

    ** The patch itself.

    If you are accessing the Bazaar repository, make sure your copy is
    up-to-date (e.g. with `bzr pull'), then use
            bzr diff --no-aliases --diff-options=-cp
    Else, use
            diff -cp OLD NEW

As you see there is an _explicit_ recipe for creating a patch without
using Bzr.  With regard to git, one can use C-u C-x v = to create a
patch, and if one wants to be really RMS-compatible, C-u C-c C-u in the
*vc-diff* buffer will convert it into a context diff.

It turns out that most Emacs developers nowadays are fine with unified
diffs, however.

-- 
David Kastrup