-*-text-*-
Guile Hacking Guide
-Copyright (c) 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002 Free software Foundation, Inc.
+Copyright (c) 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2008, 2012 Free software Foundation, Inc.
Permission is granted to anyone to make or distribute verbatim copies
of this document as received, in any medium, provided that the
Hacking It Yourself ==================================================
-When Guile is obtained from CVS, a few extra steps must be taken
+When Guile is obtained from Git, a few extra steps must be taken
before the usual configure, make, make install. You will need to have
-up-to-date versions of the tools listed below, correctly installed.
-i.e., they must be found in the current PATH and not shadowed or
-otherwise broken by files left behind from other versions.
+up-to-date versions of the tools as listed below, correctly installed.
-"up-to-date" means the latest released versions at the time that Guile
-was obtained from CVS. Sometimes older or newer versions will work.
-(See below for versions to avoid.)
+Sometimes older or newer versions will work. (See below for versions
+to avoid.)
Then you must run the autogen.sh script, as described below.
-In case of problems, it may be worth getting a fresh copy of Guile
-from CVS: synchronisation problems have been known to occur
-occasionally.
-
The same procedure can be used to regenerate the files in released
versions of Guile. In that case the headers of the original generated
files (e.g., configure, Makefile.in, ltmain.sh) can be used to
libtool --- a system for managing the zillion hairy options needed
on various systems to produce shared libraries. Available in
- "ftp://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/libtool"
+ "ftp://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/libtool". Version 2.2 (or
+ later) is recommended (for correct AIX support, and correct
+ interaction with the Gnulib module for using libunistring).
gettext --- a system for rigging a program so that it can output its
messages in the local tongue. Guile presently only exports
- autoreconf from autoconf prior to 2.59 will run gettextize, which
will mess up the Guile tree.
+- libtool 1.5.26 does not know that it should remove the -R options
+ that the Gnulib libunistring and havelib modules generate (because
+ gcc doesn't actually support -R).
+
- (add here.)
Contributing Your Changes ============================================
- If you have put together a change that meets the coding standards
-described below, we encourage you to submit it to Guile. The best
-place to post it is guile-devel@gnu.org. Please don't send it
-directly to me; I often don't have time to look things over. If you
-have tested your change, then you don't need to be shy.
-
-- Please submit patches using either context or unified diffs (diff -c
-or diff -u). Don't include a patch for ChangeLog; such patches don't
-apply cleanly, since we've probably changed the top of ChangeLog too.
-Instead, provide the unaltered text at the top of your patch.
-
-- For proper credit, also make sure you update the AUTHORS file
-(for new files for which you've assigned copyright to the FSF), or
-the THANKS file (for everything else).
-
-Please don't include patches for generated files like configure,
-aclocal.m4, or any Makefile.in. Such patches are often large, and
-we're just going to regenerate those files anyway.
-
-
-CVS conventions ======================================================
-
-- We use CVS to manage the Guile sources. The repository lives on
-subversions.gnu.org, in /cvs; you will need an
-account on that machine to access the repository. Also, for security
-reasons, subversions presently only supports CVS connections via the SSH
-protocol, so you must first install the SSH client. Then, you should
-set your CVS_RSH environment variable to ssh, and use the following as
-your CVS root:
-
- :ext:USER@subversions.gnu.org:/cvs
-
-Either set your CVSROOT environment variable to that, or give it as
-the value of the global -d option to CVS when you check out a working
-directory.
-
-For more information on SSH, see http://www.openssh.com.
-
-The Guile sources live in several modules:
-
- - guile-core --- the interpreter, QuickThreads, and ice-9
- - guile-tcltk --- the Guile/Tk interface
- - guile-tk --- the new Guile/Tk interface, based on STk's modified Tk
- - guile-rgx-ctax --- the Guile/Rx interface, and the ctax implementation
- - guile-scsh --- the port of SCSH to guile, talk to Gary Houston
- - guile-www --- A Guile module for making HTTP requests.
- - guile-statprof --- an experimental statistical profiler.
-
-There is a mailing list for CVS commit messages; see README for details.
-
-- The guile-core tree is now versioned similarly to the Linux kernel.
-Guile now always uses three numbers to represent the version,
-i.e. "1.6.5". The first number, 1, is the major version number, the
-second number, 6, is the minor version number, and the third number,
-5, is the micro version number. Changes in major version number
-indicate major changes in Guile.
-
-Minor version numbers that are even denote stable releases, and odd
-minor version numbers denote development versions (which may be
-unstable). The micro version number indicates a minor sub-revision of
-a given MAJOR.MINOR release.
-
-- A default CVS checkout will get the current unstable development
-tree. However, for each stable release, a CVS branch is created so
-that release (and ongoing maintenance) of the stable version can
-proceed independent of the development of the next unstable version.
-To check out a particular stable branch, you just need to specify "-r
-branch_release-X-Y" to your CVS checkout command (or to any update).
-For example, if you wanted to check out the 1.6 stable branch, you
-would specify "-r branch_release-1-6".
-
-So, for example, during a normal development cycle, work will proceed
-on an unstable version, say 1.5.X, until it is decided that it's time
-for a stable release. At that point, a branch named
-branch_release-1-6 will be created, and the version numbers on the
-HEAD of the CVS tree (the trunk, i.e. what you get by default), will
-be changed to reflect the new unstable version 1.7.X. Then unstable
-development will proceed on the unstable version, while the stable
-1.5.X branch is fixed up for the eventual 1.6.0 release.
-
-Anytime you want to yank an existing checked out tree to the stable
-branch, you can run a command like this:
-
- cvs -z3 update -r branch_release-1-6 -Pd
-
-This will yank the working directory over on to the stable release
-branch. Note that this directory will track that branch from then on
-unless you do something to yank it back to the main (unstable) trunk.
-
-To go back to the unstable branch, you can use
-
- cvs -z3 update -A -Pd
+described below, we encourage you to submit it to Guile. Post your
+patch to guile-devel@gnu.org.
-Note that in either case, you should probably make sure you've
-commited or removed all local changes before running the commands or
-you're likely to have some unexpected results.
+- We prefer patches generated using 'git format-patch'.
-Finally note that one approach, should you need to work on both
-branches, is to keep two trees checked out, one stable, the other
-unstable and you can work in whichever is appropriate.
+- Provide a description in the commit message, like so:
-To save some initial bandwidth, you can check out either the stable
-tree or the unstable tree, and then do something like this:
+ 1-line description of change
- cp -a core-unstable core-1.5
- cd core-1.5
- cvs -z3 update -r branch_release-1-6 -Pd
+ More extensive discussion of your change. Document why you are
+ changing things.
-- The stable and unstable CVS trees are distinct, and no changes will
-automatically propagate between them. If you make changes that need
-to show up both places, you'll need to apply the changes both places.
-You *might* be able to do this with a cvs command, but often you'll
-probably need to apply the changes by hand or risk migrating
-superfluous modifications between the two versions. This is
-particularly important when moving a change from the unstable branch
-to the stable branch.
-
-- In general, please don't be adventurous with the stable branch. We
-mostly want bugfixes, documentation improvements, build improvements,
-etc., though exceptions will doubtless exist.
-
-- There are a few CVS tagging conventions which follow the Scheme
-convention that dashes are used to separate words within a single
-symbol, and so dashes bind more tightly than underscores. This means
-that foo-bar_baz-bax indicates that foo-bar is somehow separate from
-baz-bax. The conventions are as follows:
-
- Branch root tags:
- -----------------
- anytime just before you create a branch it's a good
- idea to create a normal tag so that you can refer to the branch point
- on the main trunk as well as on the branch. So please use a tag of
- the form
-
- branch-root-release-1-X
-
- or more generally, for other non-release branches:
-
- branch-root_FOO
-
- Branch tags:
- ------------
- for the branch tag itself please use
-
- branch_release-1-6
-
- or more generally, for other non-release branches:
-
- branch_FOO
-
- Merge tags:
- -----------
- Whenever you're merging a branch back into the trunk (or into another
- branch repeatedly) you need to tag the branch each time you merge. If
- you don't do that, you won't be able to merge repeatedly without
- possibly tedious conflicts. For those tags, we suggest:
-
- branch-merge_SOME-FOO_to_SOME-BAR_1
- branch-merge_SOME-FOO_to_SOME-BAR_2
- ..
-
- As an example, SOME-BAR might be trunk, or even perhaps another branch
- like branch-mvo-super-fixes :>
-
- More mundanely, you might have
+ * filename (function name): file specific change comments.
- branch-merge_release-1-6_to_trunk_1
-
- (Merging the stable branch to the trunk like this
- will probably be much more common, when it happens, than the
- reverse for the reasons mentioned above.
-
- Release tags:
- -------------
- When releasing a new version of guile, please use:
-
- release_X-Y-Z
-
- i.e.
-
- release_1-6-0
-
-- If you hack on a stable branch, please apply any relevant patches or
-fixes to the current unstable version (the main CVS trunk) as well.
-Similarly, please back-port any important fixes to the unstable CVS
-tree to the current stable branch.
-
-- We check Makefile.am and configure.in files into CVS, but the
-"autogen.sh" script must be run from the top-level to generate the
-actual "configure" script that then must be run to create the various
-Makefile-s to build guile. The general rule is that you should be able
-to check out a working directory of Guile from CVS, and then type
-"./autogen.sh", then "configure", and finally "make". No
-automatically generated files should be checked into the CVS
-repository.
-
-- The .cvsignore file is contained in the repository, to provide a
-reasonable list of auto-generated files that should not be checked in.
-This, however, prohibits one from having local additions to the
-.cvsignore file (yes, you can modify it and never check it in, but
-that doesn't seem to be a good solution to me). To get around this
-problem, you might want to patch your cvs program so that it uses a
-.cvsignore-local file (say) instead of the one from the repository. A
-patch for this can be found at the very end of this file.
-
-- (Automake 1.4 only) Be sure to run automake at the top of the tree
-with no arguments. Do not use `automake Makefile' to regenerate
-specific Makefile.in files, and do not trust the Makefile rules to
-rebuild them when they are out of date. Automake 1.4 will add
-extraneous rules to the top-level Makefile if you specify specific
-Makefiles to rebuild on the command line. Running the command
-`autoreconf --force' should take care of everything correctly.
-
-- Make sure your changes compile and work, at least on your own
-machine, before checking them into the main branch of the Guile
-repository. A good way for testing this is to run "make distcheck".
-If you really need to check in untested changes, make a branch.
-
-- Include each log entry in both the ChangeLog and in the CVS logs.
-If you're using Emacs, the pcl-cvs interface to CVS has features to
-make this easier; it checks the ChangeLog, and generates good default
-CVS log entries from that.
+- For proper credit, also make sure you update the AUTHORS file
+(for new files for which you've assigned copyright to the FSF), or
+the THANKS file (for everything else).
Coding standards =====================================================
-- Before contributing larger amounts of code to Guile, please read the
-documents in `guile-core/devel/policy' in the CVS source tree.
-
- As for any part of Project GNU, changes to Guile should follow the
GNU coding standards. The standards are available via anonymous FTP
from prep.ai.mit.edu, as /pub/gnu/standards/standards.texi and
have more work to do, and assures that everyone won't switch to the
most lenient compiler they can find. :)
-Note also that EGCS (as of November 3 1998) doesn't handle the
-`noreturn' attribute properly, so it doesn't understand that functions
-like scm_error won't return. This may lead to some silly warnings
-about uninitialized variables. You should look into these warnings to
-make sure they are indeed spurious, but you needn't correct warnings
-caused by this EGCS bug.
-
- If you add code which uses functions or other features that are not
entirely portable, please make sure the rest of Guile will still
function properly on systems where they are missing. This usually
manage without the deprecated definition.
4. Add an entry that the definition has been deprecated in NEWS and
- explain what do do instead.
+ explain what to do instead.
5. In file TODO, there is a list of releases with reminders about what
to do at each release. Add a reminder about the removal of the
deprecated defintion at the appropriate release.
-- Please write log entries for functions written in C under the
-functions' C names, and write log entries for functions written in
-Scheme under the functions' Scheme names. Please don't do this:
+- Write commit messages for functions written in C using the
+functions' C names, and write entries for functions written in Scheme
+using the functions' Scheme names. For example,
- * procs.c, procs.h (procedure-documentation): Moved from eval.c.
+ * foo.c: Moved scm_procedure_documentation from eval.c.
-Entries like this make it harder to search the ChangeLogs, because you
-can never tell which name the entry will refer to. Instead, write this:
+is preferred over
- * procs.c, procs.h (scm_procedure_documentation): Moved from eval.c.
+ * foo.c: Moved procedure-documentation from eval.c.
Changes like adding this line are special:
Since the change here is about the name itself --- we're adding a new
alias for scm_map that guarantees the order in which we process list
elements, but we're not changing scm_map at all --- it's appropriate
-to use the Scheme name in the log entry.
-
-- There's no need to keep a change log for a ChangeLog file. For any
-other kind of file (including documentation, since our documentation
-is indeed precisely engineered -- we surpass GNU standards here), add
-an appropriate ChangeLog entry when you change it. Simple!
+to use the Scheme name in the commit message.
- Make sure you have papers from people before integrating their
changes or contributions. This is very frustrating, but very
- When you get bug reports or patches from people, be sure to list
them in THANKS.
+- Do not introduce trailing whitespace (and feel free to clean it up
+opportunistically, that is, if doing so is part of some other change).
+The goal is to reduce (and over time, eliminate) spurious diffs.
+
+For Emacs users:
+ (add-hook 'before-save-hook 'delete-trailing-whitespace)
Naming conventions =================================================
You can define the GUILE_DEBUG flag by passing --enable-guile-debug to
the configure script.
-- You'll see uses of the macro SCM_P scattered throughout the code;
-those are vestiges of a time when Guile was meant to compile on
-pre-ANSI compilers. Guile now requires ANSI C, so when you write new
-functions, feel free to use ANSI declarations, and please provide
-prototypes for everything. You don't need to use SCM_P in new code.
-
Jim Blandy, and others
-
-Patches ===========================================================
-
-This one makes cvs-1.10 consider the file $CVSDOTIGNORE instead of
-.cvsignore when that environment variable is set.
-
-=== patch start ===
-diff -r -u cvs-1.10/src/cvs.h cvs-1.10.ignore-hack/src/cvs.h
---- cvs-1.10/src/cvs.h Mon Jul 27 04:54:11 1998
-+++ cvs-1.10.ignore-hack/src/cvs.h Sun Jan 23 12:58:09 2000
-@@ -516,7 +516,7 @@
-
- extern int ign_name PROTO ((char *name));
- void ign_add PROTO((char *ign, int hold));
--void ign_add_file PROTO((char *file, int hold));
-+int ign_add_file PROTO((char *file, int hold));
- void ign_setup PROTO((void));
- void ign_dir_add PROTO((char *name));
- int ignore_directory PROTO((char *name));
-diff -r -u cvs-1.10/src/ignore.c cvs-1.10.ignore-hack/src/ignore.c
---- cvs-1.10/src/ignore.c Mon Sep 8 01:04:15 1997
-+++ cvs-1.10.ignore-hack/src/ignore.c Sun Jan 23 12:57:50 2000
-@@ -99,9 +99,9 @@
- /*
- * Open a file and read lines, feeding each line to a line parser. Arrange
- * for keeping a temporary list of wildcards at the end, if the "hold"
-- * argument is set.
-+ * argument is set. Return true when the file exists and has been handled.
- */
--void
-+int
- ign_add_file (file, hold)
- char *file;
- int hold;
-@@ -149,8 +149,8 @@
- if (fp == NULL)
- {
- if (! existence_error (errno))
-- error (0, errno, "cannot open %s", file);
-- return;
-+ error (0, errno, "cannot open %s", file);
-+ return 0;
- }
- while (getline (&line, &line_allocated, fp) >= 0)
- ign_add (line, hold);
-@@ -159,6 +159,7 @@
- if (fclose (fp) < 0)
- error (0, errno, "cannot close %s", file);
- free (line);
-+ return 1;
- }
-
- /* Parse a line of space-separated wildcards and add them to the list. */
-@@ -375,6 +376,7 @@
- struct stat sb;
- char *file;
- char *xdir;
-+ char *cvsdotignore;
-
- /* Set SUBDIRS if we have subdirectory information in ENTRIES. */
- if (entries == NULL)
-@@ -397,7 +399,10 @@
- if (dirp == NULL)
- return;
-
-- ign_add_file (CVSDOTIGNORE, 1);
-+ cvsdotignore = getenv("CVSDOTIGNORE");
-+ if (cvsdotignore == NULL || !ign_add_file (cvsdotignore, 1))
-+ ign_add_file (CVSDOTIGNORE, 1);
-+
- wrap_add_file (CVSDOTWRAPPER, 1);
-
- while ((dp = readdir (dirp)) != NULL)
-=== patch end ===
-
-This one is for pcl-cvs-2.9.2, so that `i' adds to the local
-.cvsignore file.
-
-=== patch start ===
---- pcl-cvs.el~ Mon Nov 1 12:33:46 1999
-+++ pcl-cvs.el Tue Jan 25 21:46:27 2000
-@@ -1177,7 +1177,10 @@
- "Append the file in FILEINFO to the .cvsignore file.
- Can only be used in the *cvs* buffer."
- (save-window-excursion
-- (set-buffer (find-file-noselect (expand-file-name ".cvsignore" dir)))
-+ (set-buffer (find-file-noselect
-+ (expand-file-name (or (getenv "CVSDOTIGNORE")
-+ ".cvsignore")
-+ dir)))
- (goto-char (point-max))
- (unless (zerop (current-column)) (insert "\n"))
- (insert str "\n")
-=== patch end ===
HCoop / bpt / guile.git / blobdiff