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Re: Applying a patch to existing code



On Saturday 29 August 2009 04:30:59 AG wrote:
> According to some of the folk who have developed Amarok, Amazon has
> changed their API which now means that Amarok is unable to access and
> download album cover art.  However, a patch has been released but I have
> no idea on how to apply the patch to the application.
>
> Looking this up on Google seems to suggest that I download the source
> code for the application (Amarok) and then several other files as well
> (the names escape me now).  When I did start off down this road, apt-get
> wanted to pull in a whole bunch of additional files which scared me off
> a bit from wanting to go any further.
>
> What I would appreciate is:
>
> (a) asking the upstream Amarok maintainers for Debian if they are aware
> of these issues regarding the Amazon changes to their APIs and, if so,
> whether the patch is any good and whether it'll be included in an
> update?  (This assumes that any maintainers read this list); and

The best way to do this is by filing a bug.  You can also attach the patch to 
the bug and the tag the bug "patch" to get it a bit more attention.  It may 
not be appropriate for stable though.  The stable release team is fairly picky 
about what changes get into stable; erring on the side of leaving know 
breakages instead of introducing unknown breakages at times.

> (b) some guidance in relatively straightforward terms on how to apply a
> patch to an application.  A link to a "how-to" is fine ... aside from
> bug reports and how to apply kernel patches, there was very little that
> I could come up with using Google.

Basically, it is download the source code, apply the patch (usually using "cd 
$some_directory && patch -p1 < $the_patch"), then go through the normal build 
process to get a package.

apt-get was probably trying to bring in all the packages you need for the 
build process.  They are normally not installed on a end-user machine, but 
you'll need a lot of -dev packages and various utilities (both Debian-specific 
and general) to build something like Amarok.
-- 
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