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. Familiarize with moving around the patches

The sage-combinat is a set of ordered patches. The behavior of moving around those is done like a stack:

   hg qpop
   hg qpush
   hg qpop -a
   hg qpush -a

To know which patch is currently on top of the stack :

   hg qtop

or which patches are currently applied or unapplied:

   hg qapplied
   hg qunapplied

or all of them:

   hg qseries 

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

   sage -b

To display the content of the current top patch, use

   hg qdiff         # or
   hg qstatus

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

3. Create a patch

Changes are always saved 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                             #this line is to make sure that the new patch is on top of the stack
    hg qnew my_improvement_AB.patch

This creates a new patch right after the current top patch. Usually, you want to create a new patch at the complete end of the stack and you can make sure of this by doing:

    hg qpush -a
    hg qnew my_improvement_AB.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.

4. 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.

    hg qtop

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

or

    hg status

to list simply the modified files. Note that you can't use qpop and qpush commands once you started modifications. If you added a file, you must specify it by the command:

    hg add <filename>

5. 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.

6. Do more modifications

You can now use qpop and qpush again and modify other patches you already created. Then follow again 2-5.

7. 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.

8. 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.

TODO : write about conflicts...

9. 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>

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

    cd .hg/patches
    hg pull -u
    hg push