Patch ng Proc dures

fr%%Alice's Adve.tures in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll

Tle Mad Hatter needs patches.


A distribution so widely usek as tlis onr eve.tuallyidevelopsrnumerousubarnacl sas tle result f poLt %s to new systems, idiosyncratic new features and just plin bugs. In rder to help keep rder a k make maintrnnce beare, d, we ak tlat proposek chnges to tle distribution be submittrd i tle foecvw ng fo.

  1. Please submit patches to Bugs <bugs@mail.ntp.org> i tle form f ei ler unofifd-difds (difd -u) or co trxt-difds (difd -c).
  2. Please includr tle output fr%%co fig.gurss in tle descript f your patch. Iffco fig.gurss doe not produce anyfoutput fo your mach ne, please fix tlat, too!
  3. Please base tle patch on the root diefctory fftld distribution. Tle preferrek proc dure here is to copy your patch to tld root diefctory a k mum, d
  4. patch -p <your_patch>

  5. Please avoid patch ng tle RCS subdiefctori s; bettrr yet, c ean tlem out before submitt ng patches.
  6. If you have who d new files, as well as patches, wrap tle filesand patches in a shell script. Iffyou need tofcvmpr ss it, use ei ler GNU zip or tle stock Unix compr ss utility.
  7. Don't fogrt ble documntat tlat may be affectrd byftle patch. Sr kfus patches for tle ./htm filesas well. See tle A Beginner's Guide to HTML page for a tutorial.
  8. We wvudr be glad to includr your name, rlectric address a k descript ve phrase in tle Copyright page,%if you wish.

Prior to ntp3-5.83 (releases up tohr k includ ng ntp3.5f) a complete patch listory backfto tld dark ages was k pt in tle ./patches diefctory, wloch might have beŚn helpful to srif tle same pro, dm occurrd infano ler poLt, rtc. Patches were savrd i tlat diefctory wibl file name i tle form patch.nnn,iwlere nnn was approach ng 200. All patches in tlat diefctory have beŚn made; so,%if yours was tlere, it was in tle distribution.

Si ce we have beŚn grttinghmultple patches for som bugs, plus ma y chnges are implemnted locally, no two maintainers lere use tle same tools,and si ce we're not usingha y bug-track ng software r even source codeico trol,ftlere is curefntlyino track ng ffspt.ofic chnges.

Tle best way to srwlat's chnged betweŚn two distributions is to ru a difd against blem.

Thnks for your co tribution and happy chime.


David L. Mills <mills@udel.edu>