Sorry for the delay in my response!

When I mentioned a patch in this article I meant a set of changes to a source code base related to a certain task. For instance, in a calendar project let’s say I was trying to color only Sundays red I would change the method “color” in class “Sunday”. In this case the patch would be only the lines of code I had changed in class “Sunday”. Patches like this one, consisting only of the changed lines of code, are useful for sharing your changes with others developers succinctly.

In Tasktop and Mylyn a context captures the set of files and elements that are relevant to your current task. In the above example the context would consist of the class “Sunday” and the method “color” since I changed both elements during the task. Uploading your context AND your patch to a task allows other users to download both the changed code and the list of relevant files. Thus, they can often review your patch changes more easily, as they are viewing only the relevant parts of the project.

Let me know if you need further clarification.

Claudio