-Copyright (C) 2006, 2007, 2008 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
+Copyright (C) 2006-2014 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
See end for license conditions.
If you don't feel up to hacking Emacs, there are many other ways to
help. You can answer questions on the mailing lists, write
-documentation, find and report bugs, contribute to the Emacs web
+documentation, find and report bugs, check if existing bug reports
+are fixed in newer versions of Emacs, contribute to the Emacs web
pages, or develop a package that works with Emacs.
Here are some style and legal conventions for contributors to Emacs:
* Coding Standards
-Contributed code should follow the GNU Coding Standard.
+Contributed code should follow the GNU Coding Standards.
If it doesn't, we'll need to find someone to fix the code before we
can use it.
Emacs has certain additional style and coding conventions.
-Ref: http://www.gnu.org/prep/standards_toc.html
+Ref: http://www.gnu.org/prep/standards/
Ref: GNU Coding Standards Info Manual
Ref: The "Tips" Appendix in the Emacs Lisp Reference.
* Copyright Assignment
-We can accept small changes without legal papers, and for medium-size
-changes a copyright disclaimer is ok too. To accept substantial
-contributions from you, we need a copyright assignment form filled out
-and filed with the FSF.
+The FSF (Free Software Foundation) is the copyright holder for GNU Emacs.
+The FSF is a nonprofit with a worldwide mission to promote computer
+user freedom and to defend the rights of all free software users.
+For general information, see the website http://www.fsf.org/ .
-Contact us at emacs-devel@gnu.org to obtain the relevant forms.
+Generally speaking, for non-trivial contributions to GNU Emacs we
+require that the copyright be assigned to the FSF. For the reasons
+behind this, see: http://www.gnu.org/licenses/why-assign.html .
+Copyright assignment is a simple process. Residents of some countries
+can do it entirely electronically. We can help you get started, and
+answer any questions you may have (or point you to the people with the
+answers), at the emacs-devel@gnu.org mailing list.
+
+(Please note: general discussion about why some GNU projects ask
+for a copyright assignment is off-topic for emacs-devel.
+See gnu-misc-discuss instead.)
+
+A copyright disclaimer is also a possibility, but we prefer an assignment.
+Note that the disclaimer, like an assignment, involves you sending
+signed paperwork to the FSF (simply saying "this is in the public domain"
+is not enough). Also, a disclaimer cannot be applied to future work, it
+has to be repeated each time you want to send something new.
+
+We can accept small changes (roughly, fewer than 15 lines) without
+an assignment. This is a cumulative limit (e.g. three separate 5 line
+patches) over all your contributions.
* Getting the Source Code
-The latest version of Emacs can be downloaded using CVS or Arch from
-the Savannah web site. It is important to write your patch based on
-this version; if you start from an older version, your patch may be
-outdated when you write it, and maintainers will have a hard time
-applying it.
+The latest version of Emacs can be downloaded using Bazaar from the
+Savannah web site. It is important to write your patch based on the
+latest version. If you start from an older version, your patch may be
+outdated (so that maintainers will have a hard time applying it), or
+changes in Emacs may have made your patch unnecessary.
-After you have downloaded the CVS source, you should read the file
-INSTALL.CVS for build instructions (they differ to some extent from a
+After you have downloaded the repository source, you should read the file
+INSTALL.REPO for build instructions (they differ to some extent from a
normal build).
Ref: http://savannah.gnu.org/projects/emacs
can properly evaluate it.
When you have all these pieces, bundle them up in a mail message and
-send it to emacs-pretest-bug@gnu.org or emacs-devel@gnu.org.
-
-All subsequent discussion should also be sent to the mailing list.
+send it to the developers. Sending it to bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org
+(which is the bug/feature list) is recommended, because that list
+is coupled to a tracking system that makes it easier to locate patches.
+If your patch is not complete and you think it needs more discussion,
+you might want to send it to emacs-devel@gnu.org instead. If you
+revise your patch, send it as a followup to the initial topic.
** Description
-For bug fixes, a description of the bug and how your patch fixes this
-bug.
+For bug fixes, a description of the bug and how your patch fixes it.
For new features, a description of the feature and your implementation.
A ChangeLog entry as plaintext (separate from the patch).
-See the various ChangeLog files for format and content. Note that,
+See the existing ChangeLog files for format and content. Note that,
unlike some other projects, we do require ChangeLogs also for
documentation, i.e. Texinfo files.
** The patch itself.
-Please use "Context Diff" format.
-
-If you are accessing the CVS repository use
- cvs update; cvs diff -cp
-else, use
+If you are accessing the Bazaar repository, make sure your copy is
+up-to-date (e.g. with `bzr pull'), then use
+ bzr diff --no-aliases --diff-options=-cp
+Else, use
diff -cp OLD NEW
-If your version of diff does not support these options, then get the
-latest version of GNU Diff.
-
** Mail format.
-We prefer to get the patches as inline plain text.
-
-Please be aware of line wrapping which will make the patch unreadable
-and useless for us. To avoid that, you can use MIME attachments or,
-as a last resort, uuencoded gzipped text.
+We prefer to get the patches as plain text, either inline (be careful
+your mail client does not change line breaks) or as MIME attachments.
** Please reread your patch before submitting it.
If you send several unrelated changes together, we will ask you to
separate them so we can consider each of the changes by itself.
+** Do not make formatting changes.
+
+Making cosmetic formatting changes (indentation, etc) makes it harder
+to see what you have really changed.
+
* Coding style and conventions.
* Supplemental information for Emacs Developers.
-** Write access to Emacs' CVS repository.
+** Write access to the Emacs repository.
Once you become a frequent contributor to Emacs, we can consider
-giving you write access to the CVS repository.
+giving you write access to the version-control repository.
** Emacs Mailing lists.
Discussion about Emacs development takes place on emacs-devel@gnu.org.
-Bug reports for released versions are sent to bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org.
-
-Bug reports for development versions are sent to emacs-pretest-bug@gnu.org.
-
-You can subscribe to the mailing lists at savannah.gnu.org/projects/emacs.
-
-You can find the mailing lists archives at lists.gnu.org or gmane.org.
+Bug reports and fixes, feature requests and implementations should be
+sent to bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org, the bug/feature list. This is coupled
+to the tracker at http://debbugs.gnu.org .
+You can subscribe to the mailing lists, or see the list archives,
+by following links from http://savannah.gnu.org/mail/?group=emacs .
** Document your changes.
-Think carefully about whether your change requires updating the
-documentation. If it does, you can either do this yourself or add an
-item to the NEWS file.
-
-If you document your change in NEWS, please mark the NEWS entry with
-the documentation status of the change: if you submit the changes for
-the manuals, mark it with "+++"; if it doesn't need to be documented,
-mark it with "---"; if it needs to be documented, but you didn't
-submit documentation changes, leave the NEWS entry unmarked. (These
-marks are checked by the Emacs maintainers to make sure every change
-was reflected in the manuals.)
+Any change that matters to end-users should have a NEWS entry.
+Think about whether your change requires updating the documentation
+(both manuals and doc-strings). If you know it does not, mark the NEWS
+entry with "---". If you know that *all* the necessary documentation
+updates have been made, mark the entry with "+++". Otherwise do not mark it.
** Understanding Emacs Internals.
HCoop / bpt / emacs.git / blobdiff