Contributing to EmacsEmacs is a collaborative project and we encourage contributions fromanyone and everyone. If you want to contribute in the way that willhelp us most, we recommend (1) fixing reported bugs and (2)implementing the feature ideas in etc/TODO. However, if you think ofnew features to add, please suggest them too -- we might like youridea. Porting to new platforms is also useful, when there is a newplatform, but that is not common nowadays.For documentation on how to develop Emacs changes, refer to the EmacsManual and the Emacs Lisp Reference Manual (both included in the Emacsdistribution). The web pages in http://www.gnu.org/software/emacscontain additional information.You may also want to submit your change so that can be considered forinclusion in a future version of Emacs (see below).If you don't feel up to hacking Emacs, there are many other ways tohelp. You can answer questions on the mailing lists, writedocumentation, find and report bugs, contribute to the Emacs webpages, or develop a package that works with Emacs.Here are some style and legal conventions for contributors to Emacs:* Coding StandardsContributed code should follow the GNU Coding Standard.If it doesn't, we'll need to find someone to fix the code before wecan use it.Emacs has certain additional style and coding conventions.Ref: http://www.gnu.org/prep/standards_toc.htmlRef: GNU Coding Standards Info ManualRef: The "Tips" Appendix in the Emacs Lisp Reference.* Copyright AssignmentWe can accept small changes without legal papers, and for medium-sizechanges a copyright disclaimer is ok too. To accept substantialcontributions from you, we need a copyright assignment form filled outand filed with the FSF.Contact us at emacs-devel@gnu.org to obtain the relevant forms.* Getting the Source CodeThe latest version of Emacs can be downloaded using CVS or Arch fromthe Savannah web site. It is important to write your patch based onthis version; if you start from an older version, your patch may beoutdated when you write it, and maintainers will have hard timeapplying it.After you have downloaded the CVS source, you should read the fileINSTALL.CVS for build instructions (they differ to some extent from anormal build).Ref: http://savannah.gnu.org/projects/emacs* Submitting PatchesEvery patch must have several pieces of information before wecan properly evaluate it.When you have all these pieces, bundle them up in a mail message andsend it to emacs-pretest-bug@gnu.org or emacs-devel@gnu.org.All subsequent discussion should also be sent to the mailing list.** DescriptionFor bug fixes, a description of the bug and how your patch fixes thisbug.For new features, a description of the feature and yourimplementation.** ChangeLogA 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 fordocumentation, i.e. Texinfo files.Ref: "Change Log Concepts" node of the GNU Coding Standards InfoManual, for how to write good log entries.** The patch itself.Please use "Context Diff" format.If you are accessing the CVS repository use cvs update; cvs diff -cpelse, use diff -cp OLD NEWIf your version of diff does not support these options, then get thelatest 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 unreadableand 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 toseparate them so we can consider each of the changes by itself.* 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 beincluded 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 Emacs' CVS repository.Once you become a frequent contributor to Emacs, we can considergiving you write access to the CVS repository.** Emacs Mailing lists.Discussion about Emacs development takes place on emacs-devel@gnu.org.Bug reports for released versions are sent to bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org.Bug reports for development versions are sent to emacs-pretest-bug@gnu.org.You can subscribe to the mailing lists at savannah.gnu.org/projects/emacs.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 thedocumentation. If it does, you can either do this yourself or add anitem to the NEWS file.If you document your change in NEWS, please mark the NEWS entry withthe documentation status of the change: if you submit the changes forthe manuals, mark it with "+++"; if it doesn't need to be documented,mark it with "---"; if it needs to be documented, but you didn'tsubmit documentation changes, leave the NEWS entry unmarked. (Thesemarks are checked by the Emacs maintainers to make sure every changewas 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 Appendixof the Emacs Lisp Reference Manual may also help.The file etc/DEBUG describes how to debug Emacs bugs.* How to Maintain Copyright Years for GNU Emacs** Our lawyer says it is ok if we add, to each file that has been in Emacssince Emacs 21 came out in 2001, all the subsequent years. We don'tneed to check whether *that file* was changed in those years.It's sufficient that *Emacs* was changed in those years (and it was!).** For those files that have been added since then, we should addthe year it was added to Emacs, and all subsequent years.** For the refcards under etc/, it's ok to simply use the latest year(typically in a `\def\year{YEAR}' expression) for the rendered copyrightnotice, while maintaining the full list of years in the copyright noticein the comments.Local variables:mode: outlineparagraph-separate: "[ ]*$"end: