in reply to Patch Etiquette?

Something else occurred to me. Etiquette from the author side.

When receiving a patch that passes muster I think it's important that the author acknowledges it formally in the docs. Not necessarily in the main Pod but in the Changes file at least. This helps show Perl hackers who are active, productive, and important but maybe don't have a CPAN presence to put on their resumes. I've seen some of the most popular CPAN authors do this and it is one of the things I like about the Perl community; a real sense of reciprocity and friendliness.

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Re^2: Patch Etiquette?
by DrHyde (Prior) on Apr 15, 2009 at 09:52 UTC
    I put a '=head1 THANKS TO' section in the module documentation that lists all the contributors.

    As for how to persuade an author to apply your patch quickly:

    • Create the patch against the author's public source code repository if possible, as that may be more up-to-date than what's on the CPAN;
    • Use diff -u to create it;
    • Include tests that fail without the rest of your patch and pass with it;
    • Include documentation if adding or changing functionality;
    • Think carefully about whether anything in your patch might affect anything else, and add more tests to prove that it doesn't, thus saving me the effort of doing so.
    The patch for the module itself is the smallest of all these! Mind you, even if you do do all of that, don't get upset if it doesn't get applied quickly. Module authors are busy people, with important things to do like making beer, working on their car, trying to create the perfect pie, and so on.
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