Before starting to code:
update your CVS tree, or alternatively download the latest snapshot
copy this original tree, so you can make a patch against this tree
Before creating the patch:
run make distclean && ./configure && make and test if it runs successfully
if you have the possibility do this both with gcc-2.95 and gcc-3. as compiler
Now create the patch. Suppose you have two directories, original-tree and my-tree
run make distclean in both trees
cd to the parent dir of both trees
run diff -Naur original-tree my-tree | bzip2 -9c > patchbla.diff.bz2