Contribute/First Steps with your KDE SVN Account
cleanup confusing sections and fix sections which contain a todo
This tutorial is about what to do when you are a fresh owner of a new contributor account for KDE.
Notations
- SVN is used to describe an SVN server, mostly KDE's non-anonymous or anonymous SVN servers.
- The lower case word svn is used to describe the program named svn, which the user can use to access SVN.
Preliminary
This tutorial assumes that you have applied for a KDE Contributor account as described here and that you have received a positive answer with the information associated with your new account.
Read First!
Now you have a KDE Contributor account.
Please note that the answer email will have an explanation about how to use the account. (This explanation is also the file kde-common/svn/svn_instructions.txt.) It contains also topics not discussed here. So please read this email.
In case of conflicting instructions, please follow those of the email, not the ones of this tutorial.
Changed URLs
Until now, you have worked with one of the anonymous servers. Now that you have a KDE Contributor account, you will not use that anonymous server anymore. Therefore the base URL to the SVN server changes for you.
For the standard anonymous SVN of KDE, it was: svn://anonsvn.kde.org assuming that you have not used an anonymous SVN mirror. If you have used another anonymous SVN server for KDE, then please use its URL instead.
Now the new base URL for your access to the KDE SVN server will be:
svn+ssh://[email protected]/home/kde
There is no need to specify a username, the server will work that out from your ssh key
Changing The URLs of the Modules of Your Local SVN Copy
This only applies if you have local copies of SVN files that were taken from an anonymous SVN Server, otherwise skip this.
To use the KDE SVN server instead of one of the anonymous SVN servers, you need to tell each module of your local SVN copy that you want to change the server. SVN does this with the command
svn switch --relocate
Assuming that you are processing the kdelibs module, you have to use:
svn switch --relocate svn://anonsvn.kde.org/home/kde/trunk/KDE/kdelibs svn+ssh://[email protected]/home/kde/trunk/KDE/kdelibs
For other modules than kdelibs (or for branches or for tags), you have to change the relative module path; similarly, if you used another anonymous server.
Be careful on what URLs you type, as SVN will only replace the exact old URL by the exact new URL. So if you mistype one of the URLs, it will not work later. (If you have already fallen into this pitfall, it is not a problem, just use relocate again to replace the wrong URL with the right one.)
You will be asked to accept the SSL certificate on the first attempt to access the server.
$ svn switch --relocate svn://anonsvn.kde.org/home/kde/trunk/KDE/kdelibs svn+ssh://[email protected]/home/kde/trunk/KDE/kdelibs
The authenticity of host 'svn.kde.org (195.135.221.74)' can't be established.
RSA key fingerprint is 86:f3:66:06:20:74:81:d0:1b:b4:2f:25:03:f7:8e:fb.
Are you sure you want to continue connecting (yes/no)? yes
Warning: Permanently added 'svn.kde.org,195.135.221.74' (RSA) to the list of known hosts.
Ensure that the fingerprint matches that in the document Using Subversion with KDE. (Normally, the SHA1 fingerprint is used for HTTPS.)
First Test
The following steps are described using the command line tool svn. Personally, I find it better to start with it, as you know immediately where the problems are. Of course, after you have made your first test, you may use whatever tool that you prefer.
Then you should be ready to start. The best test is to try to update a small directory. So change to a (small) directory of your local copy of KDE and type:
svn update
Alternatively, if you have no local copies installed, you can just checkout a module.
svn checkout YOUR_URL
Obviously, replace YOUR_URL with the correct path.
Now you can use the SVN commands on KDE's main SVN.
Default Editor
This section is only useful if you plan to use the svn program. If you always plan to use a GUI front-end, you can skip this section.
When committing, svn wants some text for commenting the commit. You can either specify it directly with the -m parameter or by a file with -F or --file. If you do neither of both, svn will run an editor to ask for a comment.
- TODO: improve this section
- TODO: better ask the user to modify the svn configuration files?
This editor is taken either from the svn configuration files or if not defined there from the environment variables: first $SVN_EDITOR, then $VISUAL, then $EDITOR depending which one is defined.
So maybe you should check your environment variables:
echo $SVN_EDITOR
echo $VISUAL
echo $EDITOR
Check that their settings suit you for your work with svn. If they do not suit you, check your file ~/.bashrc and add something like:
export SVN_EDITOR=mcedit
Here it sets mcedit, replace it with your favorite editor. Of course you can set $EDITOR instead if you want to change the default editor for you.
Be careful that if you do not set a command line editor but one that needs X-Window, you will need to run svn always in a X-Window terminal. It might suit you, it might not. Your choice!
Subversion Configuration
For proper of svn status and svn diff on KDE sources, you might want to follow the instructions from the developer FAQ for setting up ~/.subversion/config.
Committing
Now a few words about how to commit.
First be sure that the code that you want to commit is right. If you are not certain about a patch, or have some doubts, consider perhaps sending your patch to the relevant mailing list or to the relevant developer if you know who he is.
Also when committing, please give a useful message with the commit. Think about what you would like to find in, say, two years. (One day, you will probably find out that meaningless commit entries like "Fix" or "Here too" are going to drive you crazy when you have to debug a problem.)
Good code is not always only about questions like: "Does the code compile?" The code must also fit in what is planned. For example if a new code fixes just one little bug but the maintainer of the code is currently doing a re-write, he will perhaps not be pleased that something has been committed, because he will have to fix all conflicts between the newly committed code and his new code.
So the best is to communicate (if possible early) to avoid any surprise. A surprised developer is highly at risk of giving a rude answer or at least not a pleasant answer. This is avoidable by communication. Of course, a developer might ask to leave the code alone. Please respect that! (Of course, it does not mean that you should not argue.)
Commit-Digest
The KDE Commit-Digest is a weekly overview of the commits to KDE's subversion server. Now that you have a SVN account, you will probably see your own name in there soon!
The digest features a small statistics section. To improve the accuracy of those, you should add some information, like age or country, about yourself, which you can do here.
Commit-Filter
Commit-Filter is a service which allows you to monitor folders (or authors) in SVN for changes, and have each commit's diff emailed to you. This is very useful if you are interested in getting involved in a certain sub-project of KDE and want to keep up with its development.
Please use reply-to-all when responding to those emails.
Links
- Subversion
- Using Subversion with KDE
- I18N/L10N
- KDE Programmer's i18n howto