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h1. Submitting Enhancements

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If you've got a code change that fixes something or adds a feature, we'd love to see it. Please use the forums for this and work off current svn. Small changes are probably best sent as patch files; for larger ones, we can pull from your git/Mercurial repository - or you can use patches as well.

h1. Coding Conventions

Please follow the [[CodingConventions|Coding Conventions]].

h1. Running the Tests

libavg contains a number of tests that run automatically and alert the user if anything doesn't work as expected. The tests are actually pretty comprehensive and find a lot of issues that would otherwise slip through the cracks. To run the tests, do a @make check@. The tests that have to do with images will save images for the failing tests in a @resultimages/@ subdirectory. For each failed test, there will be three images: the current result, the expected result, and a diference image - giving you a good clue about what's happening.

If you add a feature, please add a test (or several) that make sure the feature works. If you fix a bug, then there should often have been a test that finds the bug ;-), and it's appreciated if you add an appropriate test as well. (That also makes the bug reproducible, thus making your fix more likely to be applied).

h1. Adding Documentation

If the patch changes the interface of libavg, we need an update to the reference documentation in libavg/sphinxdoc. To build the documentation, you need "Sphinx":http://sphinx.pocoo.org/ installed:

<pre><code class="shell">

$ sudo easy_install -U Sphinx

</code></pre>

The docs can be rebuilt by calling

<pre><code class="shell">

$ cd libavg

$ ./makedocs.sh

</code></pre>

Note that documentation is ordered alphabetically. This is not enforced by sphinx, so new entries must be inserted in order.

h1. Checkin Granularity

We want a clear record of checkins, with each checkin taking care of one issue. Changing several things at once makes things difficult when we're looking for the code change that caused a bug, for instance.