CDT/contributing

Sending Patches

To make changes to the CDT, whether it be code, docs, JUnits, etc., you will need to send patches to the source stored on eclipse.org. Here is the process for sending patches.

• To fix anything in CDT first you need to create or find an existing bugzilla report for this particular problem/enhancement
• Setup your eclipse SDK and check out source code, see Getting started with CDT development article.
• Fix the source code
• Comment your changes in the code
• If the changes are significant add your name and company in the contributor list in the file header. For new files you must add copyright header: http://wiki.eclipse.org/CDT/policy#Copyright
• Follow CDT Guidelines for code formating and java warnings/errors
  • Externalize strings (excluding exception arguments, tests and special identifiers)
  • Check for API errors (you have to setup API tooling)
  • Code with any of the warnings/errors mentioned in the policy, including strings externalization and API errors will not be accepted.
• To minimize the patch, do not re-format the source code you edited (except changed lines). Do not fix any warnings in the code you are not changing (it is good to fix warnings but it would clutter the patch, you want to solve one problem at a time).
• Until Eclipse deploys Gerrit for all its Git projects, follow the steps here to develop your changes and create a patch.
  • If you have new or changed binary files such as icons, attach them separately and indicate where do they go
  • Check you patch to make sure you did not add anything irrelevant, such as formatting of other code, etc
  • If you really want to do formatting or styling (such as converting to java 1.5) - create another bug for that and attach a patch
  • Check size of the patch, if it is more than 250 lines see copyright section below
• Submit patch using an attachment to a bug report
• Mark attachment as a patch
• If previous patches attached to the bug, which are obsolete now mark them as such
• Add a comment to which branch the patch should be applied (HEAD by default)
• Add a comment on what patch is doing, it is not easy to figure it out from the code
• Make sure bug report has a clear reproducible scenario, if not add one
• To speed up process of applying your patch you should create one or more junit tests as well and attach as separate patch (or together)
• Normally committees are watching new bugzilla activity and somebody would look at your patch in a few days
• If the patch has not received an attention in a week or so, some nagging can help. Send email to mailto:cdt-dev@eclipse.org asking committers to look at the patch. Continue sending e-mails until somebody would give up and look.

One of the fundamental rules that Eclipse follows is the ability to trace back who contributed what code and that the person who contributed it has ownership of the code, or has permission from their employer to contribute the code (since employers tend to own everything you write). To help keep this IP integrity going, please ensure your contributions are "clean".

• If you copy ANY code or images from somewhere else please clearly state it
• If you copy GPL code we cannot take it
• If you copy EPL code, preserve the original copyright and contributors
• If your changes are more than 250 lines of code patch has to go through IP review process, unless it can be applied by the committer from the same company as you are. Nobody wants to do it so please avoid it. Try to fix one bug at a time.
  • (I assume "lines of code" - they exclude comments, xml and properties files)

Tips

• If you are behind a firewall, you can use the proxy server at eclipse.org to access the CVS repository using pserver on the proxy.eclipse.org and port 80.