[OSM-dev] Newbie question

[Ed Loach]

I've done a search for answers unsuccessfully, and while I'm a bit reluctant to ask while people are suggesting each other smell, I'm hoping for some non-personal advice.

I recently added an area to the map tagged as landuse=construction. This doesn't render in Osmarender, so I looked into patching the stylesheets, which I did and manually rendering the relevant tile with the Tiles at Home client rendered it fine. I mentioned this on the Tiles at Home list, with a request for information about how to make this an official change. There doesn't seem to be an official procedure, and I was advised to either create a patch for someone to perhaps apply (which I've since sent to the Tiles at Home list) or get an SVN account if I was going to do such things on an ongoing basis (which I also now have, but couldn't work out how to apply my patch file - it complained about version issues or something when I tried). 

So, at the risk I'm going to be told I smell, can anyone point a newbie to SVN to a beginner's guide on how to either amend and commit changes, or apply patch files? I did a quick Google search and the first few results I read were less then helpful.

Thanks

Ed