=head1 NAME

mrtg-contrib - Contribution Guidelines for MRTG

=head1 DESCRIPTION

If you have written an extension to mrtg or created a bug fix, please

consider contributing it to the project. As I get quite a number of

contributions every week, here are a few guidelines which explain how to

contribute so that I can use the contribution without too much additional

work.

=head2 Translations

MRTG messages have been translated to a number of languages but there are

still many which have not been covered yet. If you want to add yours, go

into the F<mrtg-2.17.7/translate> directory and follow the instructions

given in the F<README> file.

=head2 Patches

When you have created your modification or extension to mrtg and want to

submit it to me, please crate a patch for the files which you have modified.

Do not send entire files unless they are new.

To create a patch, get hold of a copy of GNU diff (Many Unix systems will

have this installed already. In the NT world you might want to get

http://sources.redhat.com/cygwin/ to get all the nice GNU tools available.)

and type

 diff --unified --ignore-space-change old-file new-file > simple.patch

or if you have modified several files do

 diff --recursive --unified --ignore-space-change old-dir/ new-dir/ >long.patch

=head2 Documentation

All documentation of mrtg is done with the perl B<POD> system. If you want to

learn about it, type

 perldoc perlpod

and read the instructions. If you have bugfixes or additions to the existing

documents, make sure you modify the B<POD> files and not the html or txt

versions.

I take documentation very seriously. Whenever you create a new feature for

mrtg which you want to get included in the official release, your patch must

also contain modifications for the relevant B<pod> file in the F<doc> tree or

for the documentation sections of F<cfgmaker> and F<indexmaker>.

=head1 ADDRESS

Send your patches, translations and contributions to Tobias Oetiker

E<lt>tobi@oetiker.chE<gt>

=head1 AUTHOR

Tobias Oetiker E<lt>tobi@oetiker.chE<gt>