We love us some patch goodness. If you want to change something in Penrose or fix a bug you've run across, there's no faster way to make it happen than to do it yourself. Please submit the patch description using our JIRA, in addition you can use http://pastie.caboo.se/ entry for an easier piping,
e.g: curl http://pastie.caboo.se/10928/text | patch -p0

Get Penrose ready for patching

• Check out the trunk using: svn co https://svn.safehaus.org/repos/penrose/trunk

Make a test-driven change

• Add or change unit tests that would prove that your change worked.
• Make the change to the source
• Verify that all existing tests still work as well as all the new ones you added by running junit test

Share your well-tested change

• Create a diff with your changes: svn diff > my_properly_named_patch.diff
• Please note: Running the diff command from the root of your penrose install eases the main developers jobs since they don't need to bother with changing into subdirectories when applying it
• Create a new thread with PATCH as the first word in the subject and pastie your diff.
• Keep an eye on your patch ("watch this issue" JIRA feature) in case there are any reservations raised before it can be applied.

Pat yourself on the back, grab a beer and tell your spouse how awesome you are for being a Penrose contributor.