Use and Contribute to the sage-combinat tree : step by step

Here are the basics steps in order to use and contribute some of your code to sage-combinat. Note that a patch has a unique owner so you should only modify a patch that is already yours.

1. Install sage-combinat

$ sage -combinat install

2. Top, applied and unapplied patches

Sage-combinat is a stack of totally ordered patches. You may apply all of them, a part of them or none of them. To know which patch is currently on top of the stack :

$ hg qtop           # Displays the most recently applied patch

or which patches are currently applied or unapplied:

$ hg qapplied       # Lists all patches in the queue which are currently applied
$ hg qunapplied     #  ------------------- " --------------------------  unapplied

or all of them:

$ hg qseries 

3. Applying and unapplying patches

The behavior of applying the patches is done like a stack. When a patch is applied, all the precedent ones are necessarily applied as well.

$ hg qpush             # Apply the first patch in the series which is not currently applied
$ hg qpop              # Unapply the most recently applied patch
$ hg qpush -a          # Apply all the patches
$ hg qpop -a           # Upapplied all the patches

Note that after moving around the stack of patches, it is a good idea to rebuild sage before using it :

$ sage -b
$ sage

4. Contents of patches

To display the content of the current top patch, use

$ hg qdiff         # or
$ hg qstatus

whether to show a complete modifications or simply the name of the modified files.

5. Create a patch

Changes always go to the actual top patch currently applied. So before doing any changes, you must determine the patch where the changes should be saved. If it is your first contribution, start by creating a patch:

$ hg qpush -a                      #facultatif
$ hg qnew my_improvement_AB.patch

The line hg qpush -a is only to make sure that the new patch is be created on top of the stack, because qnew creates a new patch right after the most recently applied patch. It is suggested to add your initials (here AB) in the name so that everybody knows who owns what. TODO : Add more details about naming of patch.

6. Do your modifications

Before making any modifications, make sure the current top patch is yours and is the one you want to add your modifications to. Use qpop and qpush to move to the desired patch to modify. Note that you can *not* use qpop and qpush commands once you started modifications.

$ hg qtop                     #to print the current top patch
$ hg qpop
$ hg qpush                    #to change the top patch currently applied

Once you set the current top patch to the one you want, do your modifications to one or many existing files. At any time, you can review your modifications done since the last qrefresh (explained below) or since the creation of the patch by doing:

$ hg diff           #complete modifications since last qrefresh
$ hg status         #list the modified files since last qrefresh

If you added a file, you must declare it using the command:

$ hg add <filename>

7. QRefresh the patch

Currently, the modifications are still not part of the patch as seen by the command

$ hg qdiff
$ hg qstatus

that does not display them. Use

$ hg qrefresh

to put the actual modifications in the current top patch. You can see that it worked when typing the command

$ hg qdiff
$ hg qstatus

that should now include your modifications and by the command

$ hg diff
$ hg status

that should not display them anymore.

8. Do more modifications

After qrefresh, you can now use qpop and qpush again and modify the same or other patches you already created. See steps 3-7.

9. Commit your changes to the local mercurial database

After having done modifications to one or to many patches, you migth want to commit them to the *local* mercurial database:

$ hg qcommit

It includes all the changes to the patches done since the last commit. An editor will appear for you to provide a description of all the changes you made.

10. Merge your changes with other sage-combinat developpers

There is a possibility that somebody else pushed changes to the server since the last time you updated your sage-combinat tree. The local mercurial database will be used to merge those modifications. First pull any recent changes on the server by doing :

$ cd .hg/patches
$ hg pull -u

and

$ hg merge

if needed.

If there are conflicts between your changes and some recent changes on the server, then consult the advanced instructions.

11. Push your changes to the server

Here is where you must be prudent. Before committing any changes to the server, make sure that sage -br works fine:

$ hg qpop -a
$ hg qpush -a
$ sage -br

and that it passes the tests

$ sage -t <filenames>

and maybe even that the notebook still works

sage: notebook()

Then push your changes to server after making sure again that there is no new changes on the server:

$ cd .hg/patches
$ hg pull -u
$ hg push