Mercurial > emacs
comparison etc/CONTRIBUTE @ 84410:07e464d63e3b
Move here from the root dir.
author | Juri Linkov <juri@jurta.org> |
---|---|
date | Sun, 09 Sep 2007 11:48:59 +0000 |
parents | |
children | c7006132af93 |
comparison
equal
deleted
inserted
replaced
84409:b51d0973ef37 | 84410:07e464d63e3b |
---|---|
1 Copyright (C) 2006, 2007 Free Software Foundation, Inc. | |
2 See end for license conditions. | |
3 | |
4 | |
5 Contributing to Emacs | |
6 | |
7 Emacs is a collaborative project and we encourage contributions from | |
8 anyone and everyone. If you want to contribute in the way that will | |
9 help us most, we recommend (1) fixing reported bugs and (2) | |
10 implementing the feature ideas in etc/TODO. However, if you think of | |
11 new features to add, please suggest them too -- we might like your | |
12 idea. Porting to new platforms is also useful, when there is a new | |
13 platform, but that is not common nowadays. | |
14 | |
15 For documentation on how to develop Emacs changes, refer to the Emacs | |
16 Manual and the Emacs Lisp Reference Manual (both included in the Emacs | |
17 distribution). The web pages in http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs | |
18 contain additional information. | |
19 | |
20 You may also want to submit your change so that can be considered for | |
21 inclusion in a future version of Emacs (see below). | |
22 | |
23 If you don't feel up to hacking Emacs, there are many other ways to | |
24 help. You can answer questions on the mailing lists, write | |
25 documentation, find and report bugs, contribute to the Emacs web | |
26 pages, or develop a package that works with Emacs. | |
27 | |
28 Here are some style and legal conventions for contributors to Emacs: | |
29 | |
30 | |
31 * Coding Standards | |
32 | |
33 Contributed code should follow the GNU Coding Standard. | |
34 | |
35 If it doesn't, we'll need to find someone to fix the code before we | |
36 can use it. | |
37 | |
38 Emacs has certain additional style and coding conventions. | |
39 | |
40 Ref: http://www.gnu.org/prep/standards_toc.html | |
41 Ref: GNU Coding Standards Info Manual | |
42 Ref: The "Tips" Appendix in the Emacs Lisp Reference. | |
43 | |
44 | |
45 * Copyright Assignment | |
46 | |
47 We can accept small changes without legal papers, and for medium-size | |
48 changes a copyright disclaimer is ok too. To accept substantial | |
49 contributions from you, we need a copyright assignment form filled out | |
50 and filed with the FSF. | |
51 | |
52 Contact us at emacs-devel@gnu.org to obtain the relevant forms. | |
53 | |
54 | |
55 * Getting the Source Code | |
56 | |
57 The latest version of Emacs can be downloaded using CVS or Arch from | |
58 the Savannah web site. It is important to write your patch based on | |
59 this version; if you start from an older version, your patch may be | |
60 outdated when you write it, and maintainers will have hard time | |
61 applying it. | |
62 | |
63 After you have downloaded the CVS source, you should read the file | |
64 INSTALL.CVS for build instructions (they differ to some extent from a | |
65 normal build). | |
66 | |
67 Ref: http://savannah.gnu.org/projects/emacs | |
68 | |
69 | |
70 * Submitting Patches | |
71 | |
72 Every patch must have several pieces of information before we | |
73 can properly evaluate it. | |
74 | |
75 When you have all these pieces, bundle them up in a mail message and | |
76 send it to emacs-pretest-bug@gnu.org or emacs-devel@gnu.org. | |
77 | |
78 All subsequent discussion should also be sent to the mailing list. | |
79 | |
80 ** Description | |
81 | |
82 For bug fixes, a description of the bug and how your patch fixes this | |
83 bug. | |
84 | |
85 For new features, a description of the feature and your | |
86 implementation. | |
87 | |
88 ** ChangeLog | |
89 | |
90 A ChangeLog entry as plaintext (separate from the patch). | |
91 | |
92 See the various ChangeLog files for format and content. Note that, | |
93 unlike some other projects, we do require ChangeLogs also for | |
94 documentation, i.e. Texinfo files. | |
95 | |
96 Ref: "Change Log Concepts" node of the GNU Coding Standards Info | |
97 Manual, for how to write good log entries. | |
98 | |
99 ** The patch itself. | |
100 | |
101 Please use "Context Diff" format. | |
102 | |
103 If you are accessing the CVS repository use | |
104 cvs update; cvs diff -cp | |
105 else, use | |
106 diff -cp OLD NEW | |
107 | |
108 If your version of diff does not support these options, then get the | |
109 latest version of GNU Diff. | |
110 | |
111 ** Mail format. | |
112 | |
113 We prefer to get the patches as inline plain text. | |
114 | |
115 Please be aware of line wrapping which will make the patch unreadable | |
116 and useless for us. To avoid that, you can use MIME attachments or, | |
117 as a last resort, uuencoded gzipped text. | |
118 | |
119 ** Please reread your patch before submitting it. | |
120 | |
121 ** Do not mix changes. | |
122 | |
123 If you send several unrelated changes together, we will ask you to | |
124 separate them so we can consider each of the changes by itself. | |
125 | |
126 | |
127 * Coding style and conventions. | |
128 | |
129 ** Mandatory reading: | |
130 | |
131 The "Tips and Conventions" Appendix of the Emacs Lisp Reference. | |
132 | |
133 ** Avoid using `defadvice' or `eval-after-load' for Lisp code to be | |
134 included in Emacs. | |
135 | |
136 ** Remove all trailing whitespace in all source and text files. | |
137 | |
138 ** Use ?\s instead of ? in Lisp code for a space character. | |
139 | |
140 | |
141 * Supplemental information for Emacs Developers. | |
142 | |
143 ** Write access to Emacs' CVS repository. | |
144 | |
145 Once you become a frequent contributor to Emacs, we can consider | |
146 giving you write access to the CVS repository. | |
147 | |
148 | |
149 ** Emacs Mailing lists. | |
150 | |
151 Discussion about Emacs development takes place on emacs-devel@gnu.org. | |
152 | |
153 Bug reports for released versions are sent to bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org. | |
154 | |
155 Bug reports for development versions are sent to emacs-pretest-bug@gnu.org. | |
156 | |
157 You can subscribe to the mailing lists at savannah.gnu.org/projects/emacs. | |
158 | |
159 You can find the mailing lists archives at lists.gnu.org or gmane.org. | |
160 | |
161 | |
162 ** Document your changes. | |
163 | |
164 Think carefully about whether your change requires updating the | |
165 documentation. If it does, you can either do this yourself or add an | |
166 item to the NEWS file. | |
167 | |
168 If you document your change in NEWS, please mark the NEWS entry with | |
169 the documentation status of the change: if you submit the changes for | |
170 the manuals, mark it with "+++"; if it doesn't need to be documented, | |
171 mark it with "---"; if it needs to be documented, but you didn't | |
172 submit documentation changes, leave the NEWS entry unmarked. (These | |
173 marks are checked by the Emacs maintainers to make sure every change | |
174 was reflected in the manuals.) | |
175 | |
176 | |
177 ** Understanding Emacs Internals. | |
178 | |
179 The best way to understand Emacs Internals is to read the code, | |
180 but the nodes "Tips" and "GNU Emacs Internals" in the Appendix | |
181 of the Emacs Lisp Reference Manual may also help. | |
182 | |
183 The file etc/DEBUG describes how to debug Emacs bugs. | |
184 | |
185 | |
186 | |
187 * How to Maintain Copyright Years for GNU Emacs | |
188 | |
189 See admin/notes/copyright. | |
190 | |
191 ** Our lawyer says it is ok if we add, to each file that has been in Emacs | |
192 since Emacs 21 came out in 2001, all the subsequent years. We don't | |
193 need to check whether *that file* was changed in those years. | |
194 It's sufficient that *Emacs* was changed in those years (and it was!). | |
195 | |
196 ** For those files that have been added since then, we should add | |
197 the year it was added to Emacs, and all subsequent years. | |
198 | |
199 ** For the refcards under etc/, it's ok to simply use the latest year | |
200 (typically in a `\def\year{YEAR}' expression) for the rendered copyright | |
201 notice, while maintaining the full list of years in the copyright notice | |
202 in the comments. | |
203 | |
204 | |
205 | |
206 This file is part of GNU Emacs. | |
207 | |
208 GNU Emacs is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify | |
209 it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by | |
210 the Free Software Foundation; either version 3, or (at your option) | |
211 any later version. | |
212 | |
213 GNU Emacs is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, | |
214 but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of | |
215 MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the | |
216 GNU General Public License for more details. | |
217 | |
218 You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License | |
219 along with GNU Emacs; see the file COPYING. If not, write to the | |
220 Free Software Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor, | |
221 Boston, MA 02110-1301, USA. | |
222 | |
223 Local variables: | |
224 mode: outline | |
225 paragraph-separate: "[ ]*$" | |
226 end: | |
227 |