-Here are some guidelines for working on the Guile source tree at GNU.
+Hacking It Yourself ==================================================
-- 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
-make-stds.texi.
+As distributed, Guile needs only an ANSI C compiler and a Unix system
+to compile. However, Guile's makefiles, configuration scripts, and a
+few other files are automatically generated, not written by hand. If
+you want to make changes to the system (which we encourage!) you will
+find it helpful to have the tools we use to develop Guile. They
+are the following:
+
+Autoconf 2.13 --- a system for automatically generating `configure'
+ scripts from templates which list the non-portable features a
+ program would like to use. Available in
+ "ftp://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/autoconf"
+
+Automake 1.4 --- a system for automatically generating Makefiles that
+ conform to the (rather Byzantine) GNU coding standards. The
+ nice thing is that it takes care of hairy targets like 'make
+ dist' and 'make distclean', and automatically generates
+ Makefile dependencies. Automake is available in
+ "ftp://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/automake"
+
+ Before using automake, you may need to copy `threads.m4' and
+ `guile.m4' from the top directory of the Guile core disty to
+ `/usr/local/share/aclocal.
+
+libtool 1.3.5 --- 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"
+
+You are lost in a little maze of automatically generated files, all
+different.
+>
+
+
+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@sourceware.cygnus.com. 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.
+
+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
+egcs.cygnus.com, in /cvs/guile; you will need an
+account on that machine to access the repository. Also, for security
+reasons, egcs 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@egcs.cygnus.com:/cvs/guile
+
+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.
-- Check Makefile.in and configure files into CVS, as well as any files
-used to create them (Makefile.am, configure.in); don't check in
-Makefiles or header files generated by configuration scripts. The
-general rule is that you should be able to check out a working
-directory of Guile from CVS, and then type "configure" and "make".
+For more information on SSH, see http://www.cs.hut.fi/ssh.
+
+The Guile sources live in several modules:
+
+ - guile-core --- the interpreter, QuickThreads, and ice-9
+ - guile-doc --- documentation in progress. When complete, this will
+ be incorporated into guile-core.
+ - guile-oops --- The Guile Object-Oriented Programming System (talk to mdj)
+ - 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.
+
+There is a mailing list for CVS commit messages; see README for details.
+
+- 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. 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.
+
+
+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
+make-stds.texi.
+
+- The Guile tree should compile without warnings under the following
+GCC switches, which are the default in the current configure script:
+ -O2 -Wall -Wpointer-arith -Wmissing-prototypes
+The only warnings which can be tolerated are those about variables
+being clobbered by longjmp/vfork in eval.c. The variables in question
+are critical to the interpreter's performance; as far as I can tell,
+it is difficult/annoying to avoid these warnings without slowing the
+system down substantially. (If you can figure out a good fix, I'd be happy to see it.)
+
+Note that the warnings generated vary from one version of GCC to the
+next, and from one architecture to the next (apparently). To provide
+a concrete common standard, Guile should compile without warnings from
+GCC 2.7.2.3 in a Red Hat 5.2 i386 Linux machine. Furthermore, each
+developer should pursue any additional warnings noted by on their
+compiler. This means that people using more stringent compilers will
+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
+entails adding a test to configure.in, and then adding #ifdefs to your
+code to disable it if the system's features are missing.
+
+- The normal way of removing a function, macro or variable is to mark
+it as "deprecated", keep it for a while, and remove it in a later
+release. If a function or macro is marked as "deprecated" it
+indicates that people shouldn't use it in new programs, and should try
+to remove it in old. Make sure that an alternative exists unless it
+is our purpose to remove functionality. Don't deprecate definitions
+if it is unclear when they will be removed. (This is to ensure that a
+valid way of implementing some functionality always exists.)
+
+When deprecating a definition, always following this procedure:
+
+1. Mark the definition using
+
+#if (SCM_DEBUG_DEPRECATED == 0)
+...
+#endif
+
+2. Write a comment at the definition explaining how a programmer
+can manage without the deprecated definition.
+
+3. Add an entry that the definition has been deprecated in NEWS
+
+4. At the top of release, 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.
+
- When you make a user-visible change (i.e. one that should be
documented, and appear in NEWS, put an asterisk in column zero of the
start of the ChangeLog entry, like so:
ahead and remove the asterisk. I will use the asterisks to find and
document changes that haven't been dealt with before a release.
-- 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.
+- 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:
+
+ * procs.c, procs.h (procedure-documentation): Moved 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:
+
+ * procs.c, procs.h (scm_procedure_documentation): Moved from eval.c.
+
+Changes like adding this line are special:
+
+ SCM_PROC (s_map_in_order, "map-in-order", 2, 0, 1, scm_map);
+
+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 documentation files. This
is because documentation is not susceptible to bugs that are hard to
the history of the erroneous passage. (This is copied from the GNU
coding standards.)
-- If you add or remove files, don't forget to update the appropriate
-part of the relevant Makefile.am files, and regenerate the
-Makefile.in. If you forget this, the snapshot and distribution
-processes will not work.
-
- Make sure you have papers from people before integrating their
changes or contributions. This is very frustrating, but very
important to do right. From maintain.texi, "Information for
the list of years in the copyright notice at the top of the file.
-Jim Blandy
+Helpful hints ========================================================
+
+- [From Mikael Djurfeldt] When working on the Guile internals, it is
+quite often practical to implement a scheme-level procedure which
+helps you examine the feature you're working on.
+
+Examples of such procedures are: pt-size, debug-hand and
+current-pstate.
+
+I've now put #ifdef GUILE_DEBUG around all such procedures, so that
+they are not compiled into the "normal" Guile library. Please do the
+same when you add new procedures/C functions for debugging purpose.
+
+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