| 1 | Copyright (C) 2006-2014 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, check if existing bug reports |
| 26 | are fixed in newer versions of Emacs, contribute to the Emacs web |
| 27 | pages, or develop a package that works with Emacs. |
| 28 | |
| 29 | Here are some style and legal conventions for contributors to Emacs: |
| 30 | |
| 31 | |
| 32 | * Coding Standards |
| 33 | |
| 34 | Contributed code should follow the GNU Coding Standards. |
| 35 | |
| 36 | If it doesn't, we'll need to find someone to fix the code before we |
| 37 | can use it. |
| 38 | |
| 39 | Emacs has certain additional style and coding conventions. |
| 40 | |
| 41 | Ref: http://www.gnu.org/prep/standards/ |
| 42 | Ref: GNU Coding Standards Info Manual |
| 43 | Ref: The "Tips" Appendix in the Emacs Lisp Reference. |
| 44 | |
| 45 | |
| 46 | * Copyright Assignment |
| 47 | |
| 48 | The FSF (Free Software Foundation) is the copyright holder for GNU Emacs. |
| 49 | The FSF is a nonprofit with a worldwide mission to promote computer |
| 50 | user freedom and to defend the rights of all free software users. |
| 51 | For general information, see the website http://www.fsf.org/ . |
| 52 | |
| 53 | Generally speaking, for non-trivial contributions to GNU Emacs we |
| 54 | require that the copyright be assigned to the FSF. For the reasons |
| 55 | behind this, see: http://www.gnu.org/licenses/why-assign.html . |
| 56 | |
| 57 | Copyright assignment is a simple process. Residents of some countries |
| 58 | can do it entirely electronically. We can help you get started, and |
| 59 | answer any questions you may have (or point you to the people with the |
| 60 | answers), at the emacs-devel@gnu.org mailing list. |
| 61 | |
| 62 | (Please note: general discussion about why some GNU projects ask |
| 63 | for a copyright assignment is off-topic for emacs-devel. |
| 64 | See gnu-misc-discuss instead.) |
| 65 | |
| 66 | A copyright disclaimer is also a possibility, but we prefer an assignment. |
| 67 | Note that the disclaimer, like an assignment, involves you sending |
| 68 | signed paperwork to the FSF (simply saying "this is in the public domain" |
| 69 | is not enough). Also, a disclaimer cannot be applied to future work, it |
| 70 | has to be repeated each time you want to send something new. |
| 71 | |
| 72 | We can accept small changes (roughly, fewer than 15 lines) without |
| 73 | an assignment. This is a cumulative limit (e.g. three separate 5 line |
| 74 | patches) over all your contributions. |
| 75 | |
| 76 | * Getting the Source Code |
| 77 | |
| 78 | The latest version of Emacs can be downloaded using Bazaar from the |
| 79 | Savannah web site. It is important to write your patch based on the |
| 80 | latest version. If you start from an older version, your patch may be |
| 81 | outdated (so that maintainers will have a hard time applying it), or |
| 82 | changes in Emacs may have made your patch unnecessary. |
| 83 | |
| 84 | After you have downloaded the repository source, you should read the file |
| 85 | INSTALL.REPO for build instructions (they differ to some extent from a |
| 86 | normal build). |
| 87 | |
| 88 | Ref: http://savannah.gnu.org/projects/emacs |
| 89 | |
| 90 | |
| 91 | * Submitting Patches |
| 92 | |
| 93 | Every patch must have several pieces of information before we |
| 94 | can properly evaluate it. |
| 95 | |
| 96 | When you have all these pieces, bundle them up in a mail message and |
| 97 | send it to the developers. Sending it to bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org |
| 98 | (which is the bug/feature list) is recommended, because that list |
| 99 | is coupled to a tracking system that makes it easier to locate patches. |
| 100 | If your patch is not complete and you think it needs more discussion, |
| 101 | you might want to send it to emacs-devel@gnu.org instead. If you |
| 102 | revise your patch, send it as a followup to the initial topic. |
| 103 | |
| 104 | ** Description |
| 105 | |
| 106 | For bug fixes, a description of the bug and how your patch fixes it. |
| 107 | |
| 108 | For new features, a description of the feature and your implementation. |
| 109 | |
| 110 | ** ChangeLog |
| 111 | |
| 112 | A ChangeLog entry as plaintext (separate from the patch). |
| 113 | |
| 114 | See the existing ChangeLog files for format and content. Note that, |
| 115 | unlike some other projects, we do require ChangeLogs also for |
| 116 | documentation, i.e. Texinfo files. |
| 117 | |
| 118 | Ref: "Change Log Concepts" node of the GNU Coding Standards Info |
| 119 | Manual, for how to write good log entries. |
| 120 | |
| 121 | ** The patch itself. |
| 122 | |
| 123 | If you are accessing the Bazaar repository, make sure your copy is |
| 124 | up-to-date (e.g. with `bzr pull'), then use |
| 125 | bzr diff --no-aliases --diff-options=-cp |
| 126 | Else, use |
| 127 | diff -cp OLD NEW |
| 128 | |
| 129 | ** Mail format. |
| 130 | |
| 131 | We prefer to get the patches as plain text, either inline (be careful |
| 132 | your mail client does not change line breaks) or as MIME attachments. |
| 133 | |
| 134 | ** Please reread your patch before submitting it. |
| 135 | |
| 136 | ** Do not mix changes. |
| 137 | |
| 138 | If you send several unrelated changes together, we will ask you to |
| 139 | separate them so we can consider each of the changes by itself. |
| 140 | |
| 141 | ** Do not make formatting changes. |
| 142 | |
| 143 | Making cosmetic formatting changes (indentation, etc) makes it harder |
| 144 | to see what you have really changed. |
| 145 | |
| 146 | |
| 147 | * Coding style and conventions. |
| 148 | |
| 149 | ** Mandatory reading: |
| 150 | |
| 151 | The "Tips and Conventions" Appendix of the Emacs Lisp Reference. |
| 152 | |
| 153 | ** Avoid using `defadvice' or `eval-after-load' for Lisp code to be |
| 154 | included in Emacs. |
| 155 | |
| 156 | ** Remove all trailing whitespace in all source and text files. |
| 157 | |
| 158 | ** Use ?\s instead of ? in Lisp code for a space character. |
| 159 | |
| 160 | |
| 161 | * Supplemental information for Emacs Developers. |
| 162 | |
| 163 | ** Write access to the Emacs repository. |
| 164 | |
| 165 | Once you become a frequent contributor to Emacs, we can consider |
| 166 | giving you write access to the version-control repository. |
| 167 | |
| 168 | |
| 169 | ** Emacs Mailing lists. |
| 170 | |
| 171 | Discussion about Emacs development takes place on emacs-devel@gnu.org. |
| 172 | |
| 173 | Bug reports and fixes, feature requests and implementations should be |
| 174 | sent to bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org, the bug/feature list. This is coupled |
| 175 | to the tracker at http://debbugs.gnu.org . |
| 176 | |
| 177 | You can subscribe to the mailing lists, or see the list archives, |
| 178 | by following links from http://savannah.gnu.org/mail/?group=emacs . |
| 179 | |
| 180 | ** Document your changes. |
| 181 | |
| 182 | Any change that matters to end-users should have a NEWS entry. |
| 183 | |
| 184 | Think about whether your change requires updating the documentation |
| 185 | (both manuals and doc-strings). If you know it does not, mark the NEWS |
| 186 | entry with "---". If you know that *all* the necessary documentation |
| 187 | updates have been made, mark the entry with "+++". Otherwise do not mark it. |
| 188 | |
| 189 | ** Understanding Emacs Internals. |
| 190 | |
| 191 | The best way to understand Emacs Internals is to read the code, |
| 192 | but the nodes "Tips" and "GNU Emacs Internals" in the Appendix |
| 193 | of the Emacs Lisp Reference Manual may also help. |
| 194 | |
| 195 | The file etc/DEBUG describes how to debug Emacs bugs. |
| 196 | |
| 197 | |
| 198 | \f |
| 199 | This file is part of GNU Emacs. |
| 200 | |
| 201 | GNU Emacs is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify |
| 202 | it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by |
| 203 | the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or |
| 204 | (at your option) any later version. |
| 205 | |
| 206 | GNU Emacs is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, |
| 207 | but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of |
| 208 | MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the |
| 209 | GNU General Public License for more details. |
| 210 | |
| 211 | You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License |
| 212 | along with GNU Emacs. If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>. |
| 213 | \f |
| 214 | Local variables: |
| 215 | mode: outline |
| 216 | paragraph-separate: "[ \f]*$" |
| 217 | end: |
| 218 | |