Since summer 2003, I'm often too busy to add new features (or even fix some know bugs) to my plug-ins. Some people have shown interest in sending me patches, but they often want to know how to proceed, or send me broken patches. The aim of this page is to show how to set up a development environment and make a useable patch.

The first thing to do is know how PDE works. If you don't, or worse if you don't know what PDE is, please read this introduction to PDE.

If the project has a public CVS (such as All The News), just follow the instructions on the project's page to connect to the CVS server. You must skip the following paragraph.

Otherwise, create a new empty plug-in project, and unzip the sources of the plug-in inside the src folder. In case you wonder, you'll find the zip of the sources inside the {eclipse}/plugins/{plug-in} directory. You also must copy the plugin.xml file in the root of the project. If the plug-in requires other files such as icons or jars, copy them in the right place (for instance, {eclipse}/plugins/{plug-in}/icons/ok.gif should be copied to {project-root}/icons/ok.gif). The next step requires a Concurrent Versions System server where you can import this new project, be it a CVS or a CVSNT server. You must commit the plug-in code on that server first. You must not modify the code before importing and commiting the code.

You now can modify the code to add the killing feature of your dreams. However, you must not reformat the code to your liking: doing so would lead to a complety useless patch.

Once the code is working and tested, you can create the patch. To do so, left click on the project, and select Team->Create Patch; you should save the patch in a file, the other default settings should be ok. Have a look at the generated patch to be sure it's correct.

You can now proudly send me your patch!

As usual, if you think that something should be modified/added on this page, feel free to mail me at [plugin at jnegre dot org] in french or english for any comment/request/problem.