best way of testing a program exists before using it?

[Nick Craig-Wood]

Tim Golden <tim.golden at viacom-outdoor.co.uk> wrote:
>  OK, I've never sent in a patch before (blushes for shame
>  as he thinks of all the years he's been using Python). Would
>  you mind pointing me towards some doc or post which tells
>  me where to look and what to do. Should I checkout svn and 
>  patch against that? Or what?

In brief :-

Checkout svn
Make your changes - remember the docs and tests as well as the code
Test your changes
run "svn diff" and save the output to a file
Attach this diff to an entry in the bug tracker
Optionally post a note to python-dev about what you've done

Thats what I've done in the past anyway!

-- 
Nick Craig-Wood <nick at craig-wood.com> -- http://www.craig-wood.com/nick