Description of a Patch

[TheScribe]

What exactly is a patch? I know what it is, but I'm not quite sure as to what is allowed as a patch. Could someone explain it? Or if an page exists for this post the link. Thanks.

[Alarantalara]

You can submit anything that modifies the game as a patch. If you're asking for acceptance guidelines, then it depends on whoever is working on the area affected by the patch. Based on patches I've seen, those that follow the existing code style and minimize the effort on the part of the developer to review it are more likely to be accepted.

You can look at the accepted patches on gna.org for examples. You'll notice most of them fix bugs, but some generalize existing code or add minor features.

Edit: I just remembered, this page also lists things for which patches are likely to be accepted: http://wiki.wesnoth.org/EasyCoding

[TheScribe]

That's not quite what I meant. Thanks though.

What I was asking is is it only code that modifys the game and play itself, or is cleaning up code allowed? (for that matter, is code the only thing allowed?)

[Boucman]

clean-ups are accepted, and anything can come as patches (well, imagesand music are tricky, but wml,lua, code, python tools, everything else)

[Iris]

Art should go exclusively through an artwork development director or the Art Contributions forum, and music through Music & Sound Development.

Also, regarding code clean-ups: format clean-ups are unlikely to be accepted or count for anything; refactoring and optimization changes may be accepted depending on the circumstances and possible benefits, but they may take incredibly long to be reviewed unless there’s someone actively maintaining the targeted component.

[TheScribe]

Thanks.

P.S. How do I use a patch that wasn't commited?

[lipk]

svn patch /path/to/patch should do it, assuming that the patch is in standard diff format. You can also remove an applied patch with svn patch /path/to/patch --reverse-diff