Commit | Line | Data |
---|---|---|
23bcd7ad | 1 | Here are some guidelines for members of the Guile developers team. |
795b4217 | 2 | |
0822a9c1 JB |
3 | Contributing Your Changes ============================================ |
4 | ||
5 | - If you have put together a change that meets the coding standards | |
6 | described below, we encourage you to submit it to Guile. The best | |
c5ee0952 JB |
7 | place to post it is guile@sourceware.cygnus.com. Please don't send it |
8 | directly to me; I often don't have time to look things over. If you | |
9 | have tested your change, then you don't need to be shy. | |
0822a9c1 JB |
10 | |
11 | - Please submit patches using either context or unified diffs (diff -c | |
12 | or diff -u). Don't include a patch for ChangeLog; such patches don't | |
13 | apply cleanly, since we've probably changed the top of ChangeLog too. | |
14 | Instead, provide the unaltered text at the top of your patch. | |
15 | ||
16 | Please don't include patches for generated files like configure, | |
17 | aclocal.m4, or any Makefile.in. Such patches are often large, and | |
18 | we're just going to regenerate those files anyway. | |
19 | ||
20 | ||
d2bd3d8d JB |
21 | CVS conventions ====================================================== |
22 | ||
eb4194d6 | 23 | - We use CVS to manage the Guile sources. The repository lives on |
349d9c1f | 24 | egcs.cygnus.com, in /cvs/guile; you will need an |
aa31443a JB |
25 | account on that machine to access the repository. Also, for security |
26 | reasons, egcs presently only supports CVS connections via the SSH | |
27 | protocol, so you must first install the SSH client. Then, you should | |
28 | set your CVS_RSH environment variable to ssh, and use the following as | |
29 | your CVS root: | |
eb4194d6 | 30 | |
349d9c1f | 31 | :ext:USER@egcs.cygnus.com:/cvs/guile |
eb4194d6 JB |
32 | |
33 | Either set your CVSROOT environment variable to that, or give it as | |
34 | the value of the global -d option to CVS when you check out a working | |
35 | directory. | |
36 | ||
848f2a01 | 37 | For more information on SSH, see http://www.cs.hut.fi/ssh. |
eb4194d6 JB |
38 | |
39 | The Guile sources live in several modules: | |
40 | ||
41 | - guile-core --- the interpreter, QuickThreads, and ice-9 | |
e19268af JB |
42 | - guile-doc --- documentation in progress. When complete, this will |
43 | be incorporated into guile-core. | |
15fb0024 | 44 | - guile-oops --- The Guile Object-Oriented Programming System (talk to mdj) |
eb4194d6 | 45 | - guile-tcltk --- the Guile/Tk interface |
b1f4ddc1 | 46 | - guile-tk --- the new Guile/Tk interface, based on STk's modified Tk |
eb4194d6 JB |
47 | - guile-rgx-ctax --- the Guile/Rx interface, and the ctax implementation |
48 | - guile-scsh --- the port of SCSH to guile, talk to Gary Houston | |
b1f4ddc1 | 49 | - guile-www --- A Guile module for making HTTP requests. |
eb4194d6 | 50 | |
afdfe3f4 JB |
51 | There is a mailing list for CVS commit messages; see README for details. |
52 | ||
d2bd3d8d JB |
53 | - We check Makefile.in and configure files into CVS, as well as the |
54 | files they are built from (Makefile.am, configure.in); we do not check | |
55 | in Makefiles or header files generated by configuration scripts. The | |
350294b1 | 56 | general rule is that you should be able to check out a working |
d2bd3d8d JB |
57 | directory of Guile from CVS, and then type "configure" and "make", |
58 | without running any other tools. | |
350294b1 | 59 | |
795b4217 JB |
60 | - Make sure your changes compile and work, at least on your own |
61 | machine, before checking them into the main branch of the Guile | |
62 | repository. If you really need to check in untested changes, make a | |
63 | branch. | |
64 | ||
d2bd3d8d JB |
65 | - Include each log entry in both the ChangeLog and in the CVS logs. |
66 | If you're using Emacs, the pcl-cvs interface to CVS has features to | |
67 | make this easier; it checks the ChangeLog, and generates good default | |
68 | CVS log entries from that. | |
69 | ||
70 | ||
71 | Coding standards ===================================================== | |
72 | ||
73 | - As for any part of Project GNU, changes to Guile should follow the | |
74 | GNU coding standards. The standards are available via anonymous FTP | |
75 | from prep.ai.mit.edu, as /pub/gnu/standards/standards.texi and | |
76 | make-stds.texi. | |
77 | ||
99be3450 JB |
78 | - The Guile tree should compile without warnings under the following |
79 | GCC switches, which are the default in the current configure script: | |
859bb431 | 80 | -O2 -Wall -Wpointer-arith -Wmissing-prototypes |
99be3450 | 81 | The only exceptions are the warnings about variables being clobbered |
f0c61943 | 82 | by longjmp/vfork in eval.c. (Tho' if you can figure out how to get |
99be3450 JB |
83 | rid of those, too, I'd be happy.) |
84 | ||
d043e0bb JB |
85 | Note that the warnings generated vary from one version of GCC to the |
86 | next, and from one architecture to the next (apparently). To provide | |
87 | a concrete common standard, Guile should compile without warnings from | |
88 | GCC 2.7.2.3 in a Red Hat 5.0 i386 Linux machine. Furthermore, each | |
89 | developer should pursue any additional warnings noted by on their | |
90 | compiler. This means that people using more stringent compilers will | |
91 | have more work to do, and assures that everyone won't switch to the | |
41d368d9 | 92 | most lenient compiler they can find. :) |
d043e0bb | 93 | |
afdfe3f4 JB |
94 | Note also that EGCS (as of November 3 1998) doesn't handle the |
95 | `noreturn' attribute properly, so it doesn't understand that functions | |
96 | like scm_error won't return. This may lead to some silly warnings | |
97 | about uninitialized variables. You should look into these warnings to | |
98 | make sure they are indeed spurious, but you needn't correct warnings | |
99 | caused by this EGCS bug. | |
100 | ||
0822a9c1 JB |
101 | - If you add code which uses functions or other features that are not |
102 | entirely portable, please make sure the rest of Guile will still | |
103 | function properly on systems where they are missing. This usually | |
104 | entails adding a test to configure.in, and then adding #ifdefs to your | |
105 | code to disable it if the system's features are missing. | |
afdfe3f4 | 106 | |
795b4217 JB |
107 | - When you make a user-visible change (i.e. one that should be |
108 | documented, and appear in NEWS, put an asterisk in column zero of the | |
109 | start of the ChangeLog entry, like so: | |
110 | ||
111 | Sat Aug 3 01:27:14 1996 Gary Houston <ghouston@actrix.gen.nz> | |
112 | ||
113 | * * fports.c (scm_open_file): don't return #f, throw error. | |
114 | ||
fa3f45cc JB |
115 | When you've written a NEWS entry and updated the documentation, go |
116 | ahead and remove the asterisk. I will use the asterisks to find and | |
117 | document changes that haven't been dealt with before a release. | |
118 | ||
d49a7907 JB |
119 | - Please write log entries for functions written in C under the |
120 | functions' C names, and write log entries for functions written in | |
121 | Scheme under the functions' Scheme names. Please don't do this: | |
122 | ||
123 | * procs.c, procs.h (procedure-documentation): Moved from eval.c. | |
124 | ||
125 | Entries like this make it harder to search the ChangeLogs, because you | |
afdfe3f4 JB |
126 | can never tell which name the entry will refer to. Instead, write this: |
127 | ||
128 | * procs.c, procs.h (scm_procedure_documentation): Moved from eval.c. | |
d49a7907 | 129 | |
4085a3da JB |
130 | Changes like adding this line are special: |
131 | ||
132 | SCM_PROC (s_serial_map, "serial-map", 2, 0, 1, scm_map); | |
133 | ||
134 | Since the change here is about the name itself --- we're adding a new | |
135 | alias for scm_map that guarantees the order in which we process list | |
136 | elements, but we're not changing scm_map at all --- it's appropriate | |
137 | to use the Scheme name in the log entry. | |
138 | ||
30d14d55 JB |
139 | - There's no need to keep a change log for documentation files. This |
140 | is because documentation is not susceptible to bugs that are hard to | |
141 | fix. Documentation does not consist of parts that must interact in a | |
142 | precisely engineered fashion; to correct an error, you need not know | |
143 | the history of the erroneous passage. (This is copied from the GNU | |
144 | coding standards.) | |
145 | ||
795b4217 JB |
146 | - Make sure you have papers from people before integrating their |
147 | changes or contributions. This is very frustrating, but very | |
148 | important to do right. From maintain.texi, "Information for | |
149 | Maintainers of GNU Software": | |
150 | ||
151 | When incorporating changes from other people, make sure to follow the | |
152 | correct procedures. Doing this ensures that the FSF has the legal | |
153 | right to distribute and defend GNU software. | |
154 | ||
155 | For the sake of registering the copyright on later versions ofthe | |
156 | software you need to keep track of each person who makes significant | |
157 | changes. A change of ten lines or so, or a few such changes, in a | |
158 | large program is not significant. | |
159 | ||
160 | *Before* incorporating significant changes, make sure that the person | |
161 | has signed copyright papers, and that the Free Software Foundation has | |
162 | received them. | |
163 | ||
164 | If you receive contributions you want to use from someone, let me know | |
165 | and I'll take care of the administrivia. Put the contributions aside | |
166 | until we have the necessary papers. | |
167 | ||
fa3f45cc JB |
168 | - When you make substantial changes to a file, add the current year to |
169 | the list of years in the copyright notice at the top of the file. | |
795b4217 | 170 | |
d2bd3d8d JB |
171 | |
172 | Helpful hints ======================================================== | |
173 | ||
f84f77f5 JB |
174 | - [From Mikael Djurfeldt] When working on the Guile internals, it is |
175 | quite often practical to implement a scheme-level procedure which | |
176 | helps you examine the feature you're working on. | |
177 | ||
178 | Examples of such procedures are: pt-size, debug-hand and | |
179 | current-pstate. | |
180 | ||
181 | I've now put #ifdef GUILE_DEBUG around all such procedures, so that | |
182 | they are not compiled into the "normal" Guile library. Please do the | |
183 | same when you add new procedures/C functions for debugging purpose. | |
184 | ||
185 | You can define the GUILE_DEBUG flag by passing --enable-guile-debug to | |
186 | the configure script. | |
187 | ||
52591c80 JB |
188 | - You'll see uses of the macro SCM_P scattered throughout the code; |
189 | those are vestiges of a time when Guile was meant to compile on | |
190 | pre-ANSI compilers. Guile now requires ANSI C, so when you write new | |
191 | functions, feel free to use ANSI declarations, and please provide | |
1cf84ea5 | 192 | prototypes for everything. You don't need to use SCM_P in new code. |
52591c80 | 193 | |
795b4217 JB |
194 | |
195 | Jim Blandy |