Submit a patch

All contributions to Sheepdog are sent as patches to the sheepdog mailing list sheepdog@lists.wpkg.org.

• Follow the Linux kernel coding style http://www.kernel.org/doc/Documentation/CodingStyle
• Add Signed-off-by line by the committer
• Send patches inline so they are easy to reply to with review comments. Do not put patches in attachments.
• Patches should be against current git master
• Split up longer patches into a patch series of logical code changes
• Don't include irrelevant changes
• When resending patches add a v2/v3 suffix (eg [PATCH v2])

Submitting patches via git

The Sheepdg project uses git for version control and it is helpful for submitted patches to follow the git work flow to optimize the opportunity for review and merge.

Setup git

install git and git-email via your distribution tools. In RPM distributions, this can be done via

 # yum install git
 # yum install git-email

Add the following to your ~/.gitconfig so that commits appear to come from you and are signed with your name and email address.

[user]
        name = yourname
        email = yourlogin@youremail

Setup repository

$ git clone git://github.com/collie/sheepdog.git

Make your suggested changes

$ cd sheepdog
Make changes to the repository which represent the bug or feature you want to add.
$ git commit -s -a

After the editor opens with the list of changed files, enter a commit log.

The commit log should follow this format:

Enter a one line description of the change

Enter a multiple line description of the patch and rationale

Save the results, and send the commit to the mailing list:

Before send your patch, you are recommended to check coding style problems by

./script/checkpatch.pl /path/to/your/patch #  this patch is generated by git format-patch

send a patch directly

$ git send-email --to=sheepdog@lists.wpkg.org --smtp-server=YOURSMTPSERVERHERE -1

send a patch via file

$ git format-patch -1
$ git send-email --to=sheepdog@lists.wpkg.org --smtp-server=YOURSMTPSERVERHERE 0001-your-patch

This will send the patch to the list and format it properly for merging into the tree

The final patch header should have this format:

sheep: one-line-subject-description

More detailed description

Signed-off-by: Your Name <your-email>

If you have a patch set (more than one patch) to send, you should use git send-email to group them into one thread

 Suppose we have 2 patches in the patch set
 $ git send-email -to sheepdog@lists.wpkg.org -2 # we send 2 commits directly
 $ git send-email -to sheepdog@lists.wpkg.org  file1 file2 #file1 and file2 is generated by git format-patch -2

If changes are requested to patch

Please don't take personal offense if changes are asked in a patch. We have many users and we don't want to break the tree with changes.

Make suggested changes in the repository
$ git commit -s -a --amend

Add amended description to commit log

$ git send-email --to=sheepdog@lists.wpkg.org --smtp-server=YOURSMTPSERVERHERE -1

For a big patch series

Guilt[guilt - quilt on top of git] is a useful tool to manage multiple patches.