Mercurial > emacs
annotate CONTRIBUTE @ 74175:7c1748aba037
Fix email address
author | Jason Rumney <jasonr@gnu.org> |
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date | Sat, 25 Nov 2006 00:30:51 +0000 |
parents | caa0a3ee1f41 |
children | 68cfc1db0d26 |
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2 Contributing to Emacs | |
3 | |
71619 | 4 Emacs is a collaborative project and we encourage contributions from |
5 anyone and everyone. If you want to contribute in the way that will | |
6 help us most, we recommend (1) fixing reported bugs and (2) | |
7 implementing the feature ideas in etc/TODO. However, if you think of | |
8 new features to add, please suggest them too -- we might like your | |
9 idea. Porting to new platforms is also useful, when there is a new | |
10 platform, but that is not common nowadays. | |
11 | |
12 For documentation on how to develop Emacs changes, refer to the Emacs | |
13 Manual and the Emacs Lisp Reference Manual (both included in the Emacs | |
14 distribution). The web pages in http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs | |
15 contain additional information. | |
71604 | 16 |
17 You may also want to submit your change so that can be considered for | |
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18 inclusion in a future version of Emacs (see below). |
71604 | 19 |
71619 | 20 If you don't feel up to hacking Emacs, there are many other ways to |
21 help. You can answer questions on the mailing lists, write | |
22 documentation, find and report bugs, contribute to the Emacs web | |
23 pages, or develop a package that works with Emacs. | |
71604 | 24 |
71619 | 25 Here are some style and legal conventions for contributors to Emacs: |
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26 |
71604 | 27 |
71723 | 28 * Coding Standards |
29 | |
30 Contributed code should follow the GNU Coding Standard. | |
71604 | 31 |
71723 | 32 If it doesn't, we'll need to find someone to fix the code before we |
33 can use it. | |
71604 | 34 |
71723 | 35 Emacs has certain additional style and coding conventions. |
71604 | 36 |
71723 | 37 Ref: http://www.gnu.org/prep/standards_toc.html |
38 Ref: GNU Coding Standards Info Manual | |
39 Ref: The "Tips" Appendix in the Emacs Lisp Reference. | |
71604 | 40 |
41 | |
71723 | 42 * Copyright Assignment |
71604 | 43 |
71723 | 44 We can accept small changes without legal papers, and for medium-size |
45 changes a copyright disclaimer is ok too. To accept substantial | |
46 contributions from you, we need a copyright assignment form filled out | |
47 and filed with the FSF. | |
71604 | 48 |
71723 | 49 Contact us at emacs-devel@gnu.org to obtain the relevant forms. |
71604 | 50 |
51 | |
71723 | 52 * Getting the Source Code |
71604 | 53 |
71723 | 54 The latest version of Emacs can be downloaded using CVS or Arch from |
55 the Savannah web site. It is important to write your patch based on | |
56 this version; if you start from an older version, your patch may be | |
57 outdated when you write it, and maintainers will have hard time | |
58 applying it. | |
71657 | 59 |
71723 | 60 After you have downloaded the CVS source, you should read the file |
61 INSTALL.CVS for build instructions (they differ to some extent from a | |
62 normal build). | |
71657 | 63 |
71723 | 64 Ref: http://savannah.gnu.org/projects/emacs |
71604 | 65 |
66 | |
71723 | 67 * Submitting Patches |
68 | |
69 Every patch must have several pieces of information before we | |
70 can properly evaluate it. | |
71604 | 71 |
71723 | 72 When you have all these pieces, bundle them up in a mail message and |
73 send it to emacs-pretest-bug@gnu.org or emacs-devel@gnu.org. | |
71604 | 74 |
71723 | 75 All subsequent discussion should also be sent to the mailing list. |
76 | |
77 ** Description | |
71604 | 78 |
71723 | 79 For bug fixes, a description of the bug and how your patch fixes this |
80 bug. | |
81 | |
82 For new features, a description of the feature and your | |
83 implementation. | |
71604 | 84 |
71723 | 85 ** ChangeLog |
86 | |
87 A ChangeLog entry as plaintext (separate from the patch). | |
88 | |
89 See the various ChangeLog files for format and content. Note that, | |
90 unlike some other projects, we do require ChangeLogs also for | |
91 documentation, i.e. Texinfo files. | |
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92 |
71723 | 93 Ref: "Change Log Concepts" node of the GNU Coding Standards Info |
94 Manual, for how to write good log entries. | |
95 | |
96 ** The patch itself. | |
97 | |
98 Please use "Context Diff" format. | |
71604 | 99 |
71723 | 100 If you are accessing the CVS repository use |
101 cvs update; cvs diff -cp | |
102 else, use | |
103 diff -cp OLD NEW | |
104 | |
105 If your version of diff does not support these options, then get the | |
106 latest version of GNU Diff. | |
71604 | 107 |
71723 | 108 ** Mail format. |
109 | |
110 We prefer to get the patches as inline plain text. | |
71604 | 111 |
71723 | 112 Please be aware of line wrapping which will make the patch unreadable |
113 and useless for us. To avoid that, you can use MIME attachments or, | |
114 as a last resort, uuencoded gzipped text. | |
115 | |
116 ** Please reread your patch before submitting it. | |
117 | |
118 ** Do not mix changes. | |
119 | |
120 If you send several unrelated changes together, we will ask you to | |
121 separate them so we can consider each of the changes by itself. | |
71604 | 122 |
123 | |
71723 | 124 * Coding style and conventions. |
125 | |
126 ** Mandatory reading: | |
127 | |
128 The "Tips and Conventions" Appendix of the Emacs Lisp Reference. | |
129 | |
130 ** Avoid using `defadvice' or `eval-after-load' for Lisp code to be | |
131 included in Emacs. | |
132 | |
133 ** Remove all trailing whitespace in all source and text files. | |
134 | |
135 ** Use ?\s instead of ? in Lisp code for a space character. | |
71619 | 136 |
71604 | 137 |
71723 | 138 * Supplemental information for Emacs Developers. |
139 | |
140 ** Write access to Emacs' CVS repository. | |
141 | |
142 Once you become a frequent contributor to Emacs, we can consider | |
143 giving you write access to the CVS repository. | |
144 | |
145 | |
146 ** Emacs Mailing lists. | |
147 | |
148 Discussion about Emacs development takes place on emacs-devel@gnu.org. | |
149 | |
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150 Bug reports for released versions are sent to bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org. |
71723 | 151 |
152 Bug reports for development versions are sent to emacs-pretest-bug@gnu.org. | |
153 | |
154 You can subscribe to the mailing lists at savannah.gnu.org/projects/emacs. | |
155 | |
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156 You can find the mailing lists archives at lists.gnu.org or gmane.org. |
71657 | 157 |
71604 | 158 |
71723 | 159 ** Document your changes. |
71604 | 160 |
71723 | 161 Think carefully about whether your change requires updating the |
162 documentation. If it does, you can either do this yourself or add an | |
163 item to the NEWS file. | |
71657 | 164 |
71723 | 165 If you document your change in NEWS, please mark the NEWS entry with |
166 the documentation status of the change: if you submit the changes for | |
167 the manuals, mark it with "+++"; if it doesn't need to be documented, | |
168 mark it with "---"; if it needs to be documented, but you didn't | |
169 submit documentation changes, leave the NEWS entry unmarked. (These | |
170 marks are checked by the Emacs maintainers to make sure every change | |
171 was reflected in the manuals.) | |
71604 | 172 |
71723 | 173 |
174 ** Understanding Emacs Internals. | |
175 | |
176 The best way to understand Emacs Internals is to read the code, | |
177 but the nodes "Tips" and "GNU Emacs Internals" in the Appendix | |
178 of the Emacs Lisp Reference Manual may also help. | |
179 | |
180 The file etc/DEBUG describes how to debug Emacs bugs. | |
71604 | 181 |
71723 | 182 |
183 | |
184 * How to Maintain Copyright Years for GNU Emacs | |
185 | |
186 ** Our lawyer says it is ok if we add, to each file that has been in Emacs | |
187 since Emacs 21 came out in 2001, all the subsequent years. We don't | |
188 need to check whether *that file* was changed in those years. | |
189 It's sufficient that *Emacs* was changed in those years (and it was!). | |
190 | |
191 ** For those files that have been added since then, we should add | |
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Replace emacs-bugs@gnu.org with bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org.
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192 the year it was added to Emacs, and all subsequent years. |
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Slight formatting changes and typo fixes. Add description of NEWS markings.
Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org>
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193 |
71723 | 194 ** For the refcards under etc/, it's ok to simply use the latest year |
195 (typically in a `\def\year{YEAR}' expression) for the rendered copyright | |
196 notice, while maintaining the full list of years in the copyright notice | |
197 in the comments. | |
71604 | 198 |
71723 | 199 |
200 Local variables: | |
201 mode: outline | |
202 paragraph-separate: "[ ]*$" | |
203 end: | |
71604 | 204 |