patches policy

[Dimitrie O. Paun]

Hi all,

There is something concerning submitting patches that bothers me
to no end: inlining vs. attaching them.

I don't know about others, but for me 99/1 rule applies: I at least
skim over 99% of the patches inlines in the message, whereas
I bother to read at most 1% of the ones attached/tar.gzed/ziped.
Maybe I'm an extreme case, but there's got to be more to it than
my personal quirks.

If a patch is sent to wine-patches, it's sent there for peer review.
If you don't want the review, send it to Alexandre directly, even
though I suggest this is avoided as much as possible. However,
it you do send it to wine-patches, please, *please* inline it!

What about a nice patch submission policy:
  -- unified diff only (required)
  -- have a  decent subject (recommended)
  -- a long description (optional, if the change warrants it)
  -- a meaningful ChangeLog entry (required)
  -- new files, if any, included in patch, diffed against /dev/null (required)
  -- patch inlined at the end of the message (required)
  -- one changeset per message

Most of these things are already followed by most people, with the
exception of the inlining bit. Alexandre, what about you reject patches
that aren't in this format with a pointer to these rules? All this is a
matter of habit, and I think we'll all benefit if these rules are followed.

-- 
Dimi.