changeset 71604:801b0f932405

New file.

--- /dev/null	Thu Jan 01 00:00:00 1970 +0000
+++ b/CONTRIBUTE	Tue Jul 04 01:16:51 2006 +0000
@@ -0,0 +1,122 @@
+
+			Contributing to Emacs
+
+Emacs is a collaborative project and one which wants to encourage new
+development.  You may wish to fix Emacs bugs, improve testing, port
+Emacs to a new platform, update documentation, add new Emacs features,
+and the like.  To help with this, there is a lot of documentation
+available.  In addition to the user guide and Lisp Reference Manual in
+the Emacs distribution, the Emacs web pages also contain much
+information.
+
+You may also want to submit your change so that can be considered for
+conclusion in a future version of Emacs (see below).
+
+If you don't feel up to hacking Emacs, there are still plenty of ways to
+help!  You can answer questions on the mailing lists, write
+documentation, find bugs, create a Emacs related website (contribute to
+the official Emacs web site), or create a Emacs related software
+package.  We welcome all of the above and feel free to ask on the Emacs
+mailing lists if you are looking for feedback or for people to review a
+work in progress.
+
+Ref: http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/
+
+Finally, there are certain legal requirements and style issues which
+all contributors need to be aware of.
+
+o	Coding Standards
+
+	All contributions must conform to the GNU Coding Standard.
+	Submissions which do not conform to the standards will be
+	returned with a request to reformat the changes.
+
+	Emacs has certain additional coding requirements.
+
+	Ref: http://www.gnu.org/prep/standards_toc.html
+
+
+o	Copyright Assignment
+
+	Before we can accept code contributions from you, we need a
+	copyright assignment form filled out and filed with the FSF.
+
+	See some documentation by the FSF for details and contact us
+	via the Emacs mailing list to obtain the relevant
+	forms.
+
+	Small changes can be accepted without a copyright assignment
+	form on file.
+
+	Ref: http://www.gnu.org/prep/maintain.html#SEC6
+
+
+o	Getting the Source Code
+
+	The latest version of Emacs can be downloaded using CVS or Arch
+	from the Savannah web site.  It is important that you submit
+	your patch using this version, as any bug in a released version
+	of Emacs may already be fixed.  It also makes it easier for
+	others to test your patch,
+	
+	Ref: http://savannah.gnu.org/projects/emacs
+
+
+o	Submitting Patches
+
+	Every patch must have several pieces of information before we
+	can properly evaluate it.
+
+	For bug fixes, a description of the bug and how your patch fixes
+	this bug.
+
+	For new features, a description of the feature and your
+	implementation.
+
+	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., .texi files).
+
+	The patch itself. If you are accessing the CVS repository use
+	"cvs update; cvs diff -cp"; else, use "diff -cp OLD NEW" or
+	"diff -up OLD NEW". If your version of diff does not support
+	these options, then get the latest version of GNU diff.
+
+	We accept patches as plain text (preferred for the compilers
+	themselves), MIME attachments (preferred for the web pages),
+	or as uuencoded gzipped text.
+
+	When you have all these pieces, bundle them up in a mail message
+	and send it to [e-mail] or [e-mail].
+	All patches and related discussion should be sent to the
+	emacs-pretest-bug mailinglist. 
+
+
+o	Please read your patch before submitting it.
+
+	A patch containing several unrelated changes or
+	arbitrary reformats will be returned with a request
+	to re-formatting / split it.
+	
+
+o	Supplemental information for Emacs Developers:
+
+	If you wish to contribute to Emacs on a regular basis then
+	you may be given write access to the CVS repository.
+	
+	Discussion about Emacs development takes place on
+	[e-mail].
+
+	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.
+
+	The best way to understand Emacs Internals is to read the code
+	but there is also a node "GNU Emacs Internals" in the Appendix
+	of the Emacs Lisp Reference Manual that may help.
+
+	The file DEBUG describes how to debug Emacs.
+
+	Avoid using `defadvice' or `eval-after-load' for lisp
+	code to be included in Emacs.