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Submitting a patch

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Lukas W edited this page Jan 24, 2014 · 17 revisions

The common way to contribute code to a project on GitHub is by forking it and creating a pull request after the changes are done. This is the workflow we recommend.

If you don't have a GitHub account and don't want to sign up neither, you may just create a patch file and send it to us. Follow the instructions at the very bottom of this page on how to do this.

Using GitHub

If you have already set up a SSH key and forked our repo, first update your local copy as described below and then continue with step 2.

1. Initial setup (must be done only once)

1.1 Add an SSH key

Follow this tutorial to generate and add SSH keys to your github account.

1.2 Fork the official LMMS repository

First, visit our repo's main site and hit the fork button on the top right.
After you have done that, clone your newly created fork and configure remotes by running:

# Clone your repo into the subdirectory "lmms"
$ git clone [email protected]:yourusername/lmms.git
# Switch to new source root directory
$ cd lmms
# Add upstream repository for later updates
$ git remote add upstream git://github.com/LMMS/lmms.git

For more information on how to fork LMMS, see the GitHub help article Fork A Repo.
Having forked LMMS and cloned it to your hard drive, you can start working on the code.

### 2. Pushing your changes to GitHub After you made your changes and implemented your ideas, it's about time to push them to your git repository. For doing this, you may use the command line, as it's explained below, or use `git gui` to open a graphical user interface, which can make things a lot easier if you're uncomfortable with the command line.

2.1 Reviewing your changes

You can list all changed files by running

$ git status

inside the source root directory. A more detailed view on what exactly has been changed is provided by

$ git diff

2.2 Staging and committing

The next step is to stage the changes you've made. To stage a file, run

$ git add FILENAME

After that, you have to commit your staged changes. To do so, run

$ git commit

You'll be asked to enter a commit message to summarize what you did. Finally, push your commit:

$ git push origin

3. Contributing your changes

Pull requests request the admins to pull from your branch. For more help, read this github article.

You need to do these steps:

  • Go to your fork's GitHub site
  • Click on Pull Requests
  • Hit New pull request
  • Check whether the diffs make sense
  • Click on Click here to create a pull request for this comparison
  • Click on Send pull request

4. Pull in upstream changes

Later on, if you want to make another commit, you must first (preferably before making changes) rebase your fork on the upstream, i.e. sync it with the main LMMS repository. You can do this with the command:

$ git rebase upstream/stable-0.4

Using only a patch file

To have your changes applied without using GitHub, create a patch file containing your changes by running

# Fetches new changes without modifying your files
$ git fetch upstream
$ git diff > my-patch-for-lmms.diff

in the source root directory. Now you have a patch file we can easily apply. Just contact us about it.

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