view etc/CONTRIBUTE @ 109382:439a2fcb39aa

Add regexp tests for cucumber and ruby.

Copyright (C) 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010
  Free Software Foundation, Inc.
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			Contributing to Emacs

Emacs is a collaborative project and we encourage contributions from
anyone and everyone.  If you want to contribute in the way that will
help us most, we recommend (1) fixing reported bugs and (2)
implementing the feature ideas in etc/TODO.  However, if you think of
new features to add, please suggest them too -- we might like your
idea.  Porting to new platforms is also useful, when there is a new
platform, but that is not common nowadays.

For documentation on how to develop Emacs changes, refer to the Emacs
Manual and the Emacs Lisp Reference Manual (both included in the Emacs
distribution).  The web pages in http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs
contain additional information.

You may also want to submit your change so that can be considered for
inclusion in a future version of Emacs (see below).

If you don't feel up to hacking Emacs, there are many other ways to
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pages, or develop a package that works with Emacs.

Here are some style and legal conventions for contributors to Emacs:


* Coding Standards

Contributed code should follow the GNU Coding Standards.

If it doesn't, we'll need to find someone to fix the code before we
can use it.

Emacs has certain additional style and coding conventions.

Ref: http://www.gnu.org/prep/standards/
Ref: GNU Coding Standards Info Manual
Ref: The "Tips" Appendix in the Emacs Lisp Reference.


* Copyright Assignment

We can accept small changes (roughly, fewer than 15 lines) without
legal papers.  Anything more substantial requires a copyright
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larger changes).  Both of these involved filling out a short form and
filing it with the FSF.  The process is straightforward -- contact us
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* Getting the Source Code

The latest version of Emacs can be downloaded using Bazaar from the
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latest version.  If you start from an older version, your patch may be
outdated (so that maintainers will have a hard time applying it), or
changes in Emacs may have made your patch unnecessary.

After you have downloaded the Bazaar source, you should read the file
INSTALL.BZR for build instructions (they differ to some extent from a
normal build).

Ref: http://savannah.gnu.org/projects/emacs


* Submitting Patches

Every patch must have several pieces of information before we
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When you have all these pieces, bundle them up in a mail message and
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All subsequent discussion should be sent to the same mailing list.

** Description

For bug fixes, a description of the bug and how your patch fixes this
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For new features, a description of the feature and your implementation.

** ChangeLog

A ChangeLog entry as plaintext (separate from the patch).

See the various ChangeLog files for format and content.  Note that,
unlike some other projects, we do require ChangeLogs also for
documentation, i.e. Texinfo files.

Ref: "Change Log Concepts" node of the GNU Coding Standards Info
Manual, for how to write good log entries.

** The patch itself.

Please use "Context Diff" format.

If you are accessing the Bazaar repository, make sure your copy is
up-to-date (e.g. with `bzr pull'), then use
        bzr diff --no-aliases --diff-options=-cp
Else, use
	diff -cp OLD NEW

If your version of diff does not support these options, then get the
latest version of GNU Diff.

** Mail format.

We prefer to get the patches as inline plain text.

Please be aware of line wrapping which will make the patch unreadable
and useless for us.  To avoid that, you can use MIME attachments or,
as a last resort, uuencoded gzipped text.

** Please reread your patch before submitting it.

** Do not mix changes.

If you send several unrelated changes together, we will ask you to
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** Do not make formatting changes.

Making cosmetic formatting changes (indentation, etc) makes it harder
to see what you have really changed.


* Coding style and conventions.

** Mandatory reading:

The "Tips and Conventions" Appendix of the Emacs Lisp Reference.

** Avoid using `defadvice' or `eval-after-load' for Lisp code to be
included in Emacs.

** Remove all trailing whitespace in all source and text files.

** Use ?\s instead of ?  in Lisp code for a space character.


* Supplemental information for Emacs Developers.

** Write access to the Emacs repository.

Once you become a frequent contributor to Emacs, we can consider
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You can find the mailing lists archives at lists.gnu.org or gmane.org.


** Document your changes.

Think carefully about whether your change requires updating the
documentation.  If it does, you can either do this yourself or add an
item to the NEWS file.

If you document your change in NEWS, please mark the NEWS entry with
the documentation status of the change: if you submit the changes for
the manuals, mark it with "+++"; if it doesn't need to be documented,
mark it with "---"; if it needs to be documented, but you didn't
submit documentation changes, leave the NEWS entry unmarked.  (These
marks are checked by the Emacs maintainers to make sure every change
was reflected in the manuals.)


** Understanding Emacs Internals.

The best way to understand Emacs Internals is to read the code,
but the nodes "Tips" and "GNU Emacs Internals" in the Appendix
of the Emacs Lisp Reference Manual may also help.

The file etc/DEBUG describes how to debug Emacs bugs.



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GNU Emacs is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
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