[SLL] How do you make a patch file?

[Glenn Stone]

On Tue, Nov 20, 2007 at 01:52:49PM -0800, Clifford Snow wrote:
>I want to send in a fix to a bug in the gnome-applets.  Instead of
>sending in the entire file, how do you create a patch file that a
>maintainer could just apply to the source code?  

According to 

http://www.linuxhq.com/kernel/v2.0/40/MAINTAINERS

(which, admittedly, doesn't have anything to do with GNOME, but has some
pretty good guidelines for creating patches)

diff -u5 original.stuff your.stuff

creates a good useable patchfile that maintainers and their tools can grok
easily.  It also mentions that if you want credit, you ought to put yourself
in the appropriate place in the comments (this may be the header of the
file, if there is one, or in CREDITS or MAINTAINERS or AUTHORS or some other
capital-letter file in the top of the tree).  

Have fun squashing bugs!

-- Glenn