[gdal-dev] Patch submission & development questions

[Dan Homerick]

Gdal-dev,

I have a couple questions about the patch submission process. The main
one being, "What is it?" I assume that patches are best submitted
through a Trac ticket. Should we post here for discussion before
opening a ticket, if the issue we'd like to patch doesn't have an
existing ticket open? Do most changes go through an "official" RFC
phase, or just the addition of larger features?

There are a couple things I'd like to submit patches for. The first
addresses a question I had earlier about the OGR MS SQL Sever
(mssqlspatial), and its default tendency to assume that any "image"
column must be a WKB geometry column. Since the expected geometry
storage type is specified in the connection string (i.e. native, wkb,
or wkt, defaulting to native), the patch utilizes that type
information when auto-selecting the geometry column. Like the original
code, the patch does not try to guess which is the geometry column
when WKT is used.

The other thing I'd like to submit a patch for is the Visual Studio
2010 solution / project file. Before I do any work on it, I'd like to
know more about how it's maintained, though. Specifically, is it
something that is intended to be auto-generated periodically (either
directly, or by converting a 2008 project), or is it being maintained
by hand? The main changes I'd want to make are adding all the missing
source and header files, adding header paths, and any other tweaks
required to get Intellisense to work correctly.

A final question I have is, "What is the testing process?" As part of
my work, I'll be (indirectly) writing tests for the patch(es) I
submit, but I'll be writing those tests with an eye towards how we'll
be using the classes. If GDAL has a more formal testing procedure,
I'll be happy to write additional tests for whatever testing framework
is being used.

Cheers,
 - Dan