Running/Patching

I don't understand something. First, they release a a source code of ROM that simply won't compile unless you make changes. Now, when you try and patch things over the original code, you can't compile it again.. There is always another problem. Can't they set this thing up so it runs a little smoother? Is there anyway to avoid continuously changing files when you try and patch something?

For example, I was running Rom24b6, and I tried to patch it with Lope's Color Code. The patch seemed to be succesful, but then I tried to recompile, and there was an error that hasn't been posted on this forum yet.. something to do with comm.c. I'm not posting this for a solution to my problem, I'm asking if there is anything smoother than this? Instead of having to edit every single thing, is there a code base where you can add things with no trouble?

Rom was probably not built on the same version of gcc you are using. Newer versions have become more strict, in a sense. Same with snippets. Not only that, snippets aren't always perfect.

Stock Rom/Smaug/Circle are nowhere near perfect. Most have quite a few bugs, to say at the least. But Smaug has a community dedicated to making a fixed Smaug (FUSS), and Circle also has something similar.

Zeno is completely correct about gcc changing and being more strict now; to add to that a bit, a lot of these code bases do things that are not quite right and got away with it before. The best example of that IMO is the spot where they cast the lvalue of an assignment from an EXIT_DATA** to an EXIT_DATA*, or something like that.



Another note is that snippets are not official patches, and you should not think of them as official patches, nor should you expect them to work flawlessly. A lot of this might seem amateurish because, well, frankly, it is amateurish in the literal sense of the term. One big missing thing from a lot of this is quality control, because most people don't care past the point of "well, it seems to work for me..." Anyhow, I'll stop my rant here, but believe me when I say that you are not the first to feel these frustrations. :-)