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23bcd7ad | 1 | Here are some guidelines for members of the Guile developers team. |
795b4217 | 2 | |
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3 | CVS conventions ====================================================== |
4 | ||
eb4194d6 | 5 | - We use CVS to manage the Guile sources. The repository lives on |
23bcd7ad | 6 | egcs.cygnus.com, in /egcs/carton/cvsfiles; you will need an account on |
848f2a01 | 7 | that machine to access the repository. Also, for security reasons, |
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8 | egcs presently only supports CVS connections via the SSH protocol, so |
9 | you must first install the SSH client. Then, you should set your | |
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10 | CVS_RSH environment variable to ssh, and use the following as your CVS |
11 | root: | |
eb4194d6 | 12 | |
23bcd7ad | 13 | :ext:USER@egcs.cygnus.com:/egcs/carton/cvsfiles |
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14 | |
15 | Either set your CVSROOT environment variable to that, or give it as | |
16 | the value of the global -d option to CVS when you check out a working | |
17 | directory. | |
18 | ||
848f2a01 | 19 | For more information on SSH, see http://www.cs.hut.fi/ssh. |
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20 | |
21 | The Guile sources live in several modules: | |
22 | ||
23 | - guile-core --- the interpreter, QuickThreads, and ice-9 | |
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24 | - guile-doc --- documentation in progress. When complete, this will |
25 | be incorporated into guile-core. | |
eb4194d6 | 26 | - guile-tcltk --- the Guile/Tk interface |
b1f4ddc1 | 27 | - guile-tk --- the new Guile/Tk interface, based on STk's modified Tk |
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28 | - guile-rgx-ctax --- the Guile/Rx interface, and the ctax implementation |
29 | - guile-scsh --- the port of SCSH to guile, talk to Gary Houston | |
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30 | - guile-comp --- the Hobbit compiler (talk to mdj) |
31 | - guile-emacs --- Guile/Emacs interface (talk to mdj) | |
32 | - guile-oops --- The Guile Object-Oriented Programming System (talk to mdj) | |
33 | - guile-www --- A Guile module for making HTTP requests. | |
eb4194d6 | 34 | |
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35 | - We check Makefile.in and configure files into CVS, as well as the |
36 | files they are built from (Makefile.am, configure.in); we do not check | |
37 | in Makefiles or header files generated by configuration scripts. The | |
350294b1 | 38 | general rule is that you should be able to check out a working |
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39 | directory of Guile from CVS, and then type "configure" and "make", |
40 | without running any other tools. | |
350294b1 | 41 | |
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42 | - Make sure your changes compile and work, at least on your own |
43 | machine, before checking them into the main branch of the Guile | |
44 | repository. If you really need to check in untested changes, make a | |
45 | branch. | |
46 | ||
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47 | - Include each log entry in both the ChangeLog and in the CVS logs. |
48 | If you're using Emacs, the pcl-cvs interface to CVS has features to | |
49 | make this easier; it checks the ChangeLog, and generates good default | |
50 | CVS log entries from that. | |
51 | ||
52 | ||
53 | Coding standards ===================================================== | |
54 | ||
55 | - As for any part of Project GNU, changes to Guile should follow the | |
56 | GNU coding standards. The standards are available via anonymous FTP | |
57 | from prep.ai.mit.edu, as /pub/gnu/standards/standards.texi and | |
58 | make-stds.texi. | |
59 | ||
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60 | - The Guile tree should compile without warnings under the following |
61 | GCC switches, which are the default in the current configure script: | |
94ff0977 | 62 | -Wall -Wpointer-arith -Wmissing-prototypes |
99be3450 | 63 | The only exceptions are the warnings about variables being clobbered |
f0c61943 | 64 | by longjmp/vfork in eval.c. (Tho' if you can figure out how to get |
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65 | rid of those, too, I'd be happy.) |
66 | ||
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67 | Note that the warnings generated vary from one version of GCC to the |
68 | next, and from one architecture to the next (apparently). To provide | |
69 | a concrete common standard, Guile should compile without warnings from | |
70 | GCC 2.7.2.3 in a Red Hat 5.0 i386 Linux machine. Furthermore, each | |
71 | developer should pursue any additional warnings noted by on their | |
72 | compiler. This means that people using more stringent compilers will | |
73 | have more work to do, and assures that everyone won't switch to the | |
74 | most lenient compiler they can find. | |
75 | ||
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76 | - When you make a user-visible change (i.e. one that should be |
77 | documented, and appear in NEWS, put an asterisk in column zero of the | |
78 | start of the ChangeLog entry, like so: | |
79 | ||
80 | Sat Aug 3 01:27:14 1996 Gary Houston <ghouston@actrix.gen.nz> | |
81 | ||
82 | * * fports.c (scm_open_file): don't return #f, throw error. | |
83 | ||
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84 | When you've written a NEWS entry and updated the documentation, go |
85 | ahead and remove the asterisk. I will use the asterisks to find and | |
86 | document changes that haven't been dealt with before a release. | |
87 | ||
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88 | - There's no need to keep a change log for documentation files. This |
89 | is because documentation is not susceptible to bugs that are hard to | |
90 | fix. Documentation does not consist of parts that must interact in a | |
91 | precisely engineered fashion; to correct an error, you need not know | |
92 | the history of the erroneous passage. (This is copied from the GNU | |
93 | coding standards.) | |
94 | ||
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95 | - Make sure you have papers from people before integrating their |
96 | changes or contributions. This is very frustrating, but very | |
97 | important to do right. From maintain.texi, "Information for | |
98 | Maintainers of GNU Software": | |
99 | ||
100 | When incorporating changes from other people, make sure to follow the | |
101 | correct procedures. Doing this ensures that the FSF has the legal | |
102 | right to distribute and defend GNU software. | |
103 | ||
104 | For the sake of registering the copyright on later versions ofthe | |
105 | software you need to keep track of each person who makes significant | |
106 | changes. A change of ten lines or so, or a few such changes, in a | |
107 | large program is not significant. | |
108 | ||
109 | *Before* incorporating significant changes, make sure that the person | |
110 | has signed copyright papers, and that the Free Software Foundation has | |
111 | received them. | |
112 | ||
113 | If you receive contributions you want to use from someone, let me know | |
114 | and I'll take care of the administrivia. Put the contributions aside | |
115 | until we have the necessary papers. | |
116 | ||
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117 | - When you make substantial changes to a file, add the current year to |
118 | the list of years in the copyright notice at the top of the file. | |
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120 | |
121 | Helpful hints ======================================================== | |
122 | ||
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123 | - [From Mikael Djurfeldt] When working on the Guile internals, it is |
124 | quite often practical to implement a scheme-level procedure which | |
125 | helps you examine the feature you're working on. | |
126 | ||
127 | Examples of such procedures are: pt-size, debug-hand and | |
128 | current-pstate. | |
129 | ||
130 | I've now put #ifdef GUILE_DEBUG around all such procedures, so that | |
131 | they are not compiled into the "normal" Guile library. Please do the | |
132 | same when you add new procedures/C functions for debugging purpose. | |
133 | ||
134 | You can define the GUILE_DEBUG flag by passing --enable-guile-debug to | |
135 | the configure script. | |
136 | ||
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137 | - You'll see uses of the macro SCM_P scattered throughout the code; |
138 | those are vestiges of a time when Guile was meant to compile on | |
139 | pre-ANSI compilers. Guile now requires ANSI C, so when you write new | |
140 | functions, feel free to use ANSI declarations, and please provide | |
141 | prototypes for everything. | |
142 | ||
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143 | |
144 | Jim Blandy |