=head1 NAME

PATCHES - track and distribute your code changes

=head1 DESCRIPTION

This page documents how to distribute your changes to GNU LilyPond

=head1 ABSTRACT

Distributing a change normally goes like this:

=over 5

=item *

make your fix/add your code 

=item *

generate a patch, 

=item *

e-mail your patch to one of the mailing lists
gnu-music-discuss@gnu.org or bug-gnu-music@gnu.org
(or if you're a bit shy, to the maintainer).

=back

=head1 GENERATING A PATCH

In F<VERSION>, set TOPLEVEL_MY_PATCH_LEVEL:

    VERSION:
	...
	TOPLEVEL_MY_PATCH_LEVEL = jcn1

In F<NEWS>, enter a summary of changes:

    NEWS:
	pl 0.1.48.jcn1
		- added PATCHES.pod

Then, from the top of Lily's source tree, type

    make-patch

which leaves your patch as F<./patch-0.1.48.jcn1>.

If you didn't configure Lily using --srcdir, you can do:

    release

    tar-ball: ../patches/patch-0.1.48.jcn1.gz
    patch: ../patches/patch-0.1.48.jcn1.gz
    updeet: ../test/updeet

=head1 PREREQUISITES

For creating a patch you need

=over 5

=item *

All items mentioned in F<INSTALL>.  You're not going to send a patch
that you haven't even built, right?

=item *

GNU Diff

=item *

Python (version 1.4 or newer).  
You can of course make a patch by hand, which would go something like:

    make distclean
    cd ..
    diff -urN lilypond-0.1.48 lilypond-0.1.48.jcn1 > patch-0.1.48.jcn1

but there are handy python scripts available.  If you're doing development,
you'll need Python for other LilyPond scripts anyway.

=item *

The Lily directory structure, which looks like:

    lilypond-0.1.48/
    patches/
    releases/
    test/

=back
	
=head1 SYNCHRONISE

If you're not very quick with sending your patch, there's a good chance
that an new release of LilyPond comes available.  In such a case (and
sometimes for other unkown reasons :-), the maintainer will probably ask
you to make a new patch against the latest release.
Your best bet is to download the latest release, and apply your patch
against this new source tree:

    cd lilypond-0.1.49
    zpatch -p0 -E < ../patches/patch-0.1.48.jcn1.gz

Then, make a patch as shown above.

=head1 MAINTAINER

Han-Wen Nienhuys <hanwen@cs.ruu.nl>

Just keep on sending those patches!