Ubuntu Wiki

This page is about the requirements that a new contributor would have.

This page is a draft.

In order to make a change to a package a new contributor needs to be able to do two things, aside from actually making this change.

1. Retrieve the source of the package in a form that they can understand and modify.
2. Put their changes to the package up for sponsorship in some fashion in such a way that possible sponsors can find, review and sponsor the change.

While there are many steps in the process other than these, and these may not dominate it ensuring that these two steps are streamlined will reduce the length of the overall process.

Analysis of the current situation

We will now look at the steps required to complete the task in a common situation.

If the contibutor simply wants to make a change to the package, say correcting a typo in the description, then they have to do the following:

1. Grab the source package: apt-get source <source package name>

2. Edit the source to make the change and add changelog entry. Test as necessary.
3. Build a source package.
4. Create a debdiff between the source they just created and the one they downloaded earlier.
5. Attach this debdiff to a bug, and subscribe the sponsors team.

If the sponsors ask for changes to the patch then the user has to

1. Make the necessary changes, updating the changelog as necessary.
2. Build the source package again.
3. Re-make the debdiff.
4. Attach the new debdiff to the bug report.