Calligra/Contributing a Patch

This page describes how one can send a contributed patch for discussion to the Calligra developers.

Quick Links:

• Complete list of review requests for calligra
• Review Board rules for Calligra
• Detailed description of the Review Board on KDE Techbase

Create a patch

In order to create a patch with git, there are two cases:

Approach #1. You did not commit your patch in your local repository. Then in given branch (often calligra/x.y or master) type:

% git diff branchname > my.patch

my.patch will appear. Try to use better name than my.patch :)

Approach #2. You have commited the patch in your local repository. Copy the commit number to the clipboard and type:

% git format-patch -1 {paste-commit-number-here}

Then a nicely named file will appear.

Use the patch when publishing your review request as specified below.

Submit the patch to Review Board

If you are new to Calligra development you should almost always submit your patch to Calligra on KDE's Review Board. But some code needs to be reviewed even if it is created by long time core developers. If you are unsure check out the rules of the Review Board.

• Log in to the Review Board. It is using the KDE identity (if you do not have an account, you can get one from KDE identity, it is open to everyone)
• Click on "New Review Request"
• In Repository field, choose calligra
• In Diff field select the patch you want to upload
• Optionally: in Parent Diff field, give a patch that needs to be applied before yours (this is only needed if the patch is based on an other patch from Review Board or on a branch different from master)
• Click the "Create Review Request" button
• Fill the Branch, Summary, Description, and Testing done fields
• Add "calligra" in the Groups field
• Add numbers of bugs (from bugs.kde.org) that are related to your patch to the Bugs field
• Optionally: add specific people to the People field
• Don't forget to press "Publish" button at the top of the page. You can do this later, when you're ready. Edited fields are saved for you.
• After publishing Review Board sends email to the calligra-devel mailing list and other contributors can start reviewing
• If you think about some specific person that should perform the review, ask specifically via email or IRC
• You will be informed about any reviews that come to you. You will get either
  • "Ship It!" signal allowing you to push the patch to the Calligra git repository or
  • Notes on what to fix in the patch
• When you improve your patch (it can happen several times) use the Update->Update Diff command to upload a new patch. Contributors will be notified about the update.

Automated creation of requests

If you happen to use reviewboard more often, automating the creation of review requests is useful. Refer to the Using Review Board and post-review with Git section of the Review Board help on KDE Techbase.