gdb/CONTRIBUTE

   1
   2                         Contributing to GDB
   3
   4 GDB is a collaborative project and one which wants to encourage new
   5 development.  You may wish to fix GDB bugs, improve testing, port GDB
   6 to a new platform, update documentation, add new GDB features, and the
   7 like. To help with this, there is a lot of documentation
   8 available.. In addition to the user guide and internals manual
   9 included in the GDB distribution, the GDB web pages also contain much
  10 information.
  11
  12 You may also want to submit your change so that can be considered for
  13 conclusion in a future version of GDB (see below).  Regardless, we
  14 encourage you to distribute the change yourself.
  15
  16 If you don't feel up to hacking GDB, there are still plenty of ways to
  17 help!  You can answer questions on the mailing lists, write
  18 documentation, find bugs, create a GDB related website (contribute to
  19 the official GDB web site), or create a GDB related software
  20 package. We welcome all of the above and feel free to ask on the GDB
  21 mailing lists if you are looking for feedback or for people to review
  22 a work in progress.
  23
  24 Ref: http://www.gnu.org/software/gdb/
  25
  26 Finally, there are certain legal requirements and style issues which
  27 all contributors need to be aware of.
  28
  29 o       Coding Standards
  30
  31         All contributions must conform to the GNU Coding Standard.
  32         Submissions which do not conform to the standards will be
  33         returned with a request to reformat the changes.
  34
  35         Ref: http://www.gnu.org/prep/standards_toc.html
  36
  37         GDB has certain additional coding requirements.  Those
  38         requirements are explained in the GDB internals documentation.
  39
  40         Ref: http://sourceware.org/gdb/wiki/Internals%20Coding-Standards
  41
  42
  43 o       Copyright Assignment
  44
  45         Before we can accept code contributions from you, we need a
  46         copyright assignment form filled out and filed with the FSF.
  47
  48         See some documentation by the FSF for details and contact us
  49         (either via the GDB mailing list or the GDB maintainer that is
  50         taking care of your contributions) to obtain the relevant
  51         forms.
  52
  53         Small changes can be accepted without a copyright assignment form
  54         on file.
  55
  56         Ref: http://www.gnu.org/prep/maintain.html#SEC6
  57
  58
  59 o       Submitting Patches
  60
  61         Every patch must have several pieces of information before we
  62         can properly evaluate it.
  63
  64         A description of the bug and how your patch fixes this
  65         bug. A reference to a testsuite failure is very helpful. For
  66         new features a description of the feature and your
  67         implementation.
  68
  69         A ChangeLog entry as plaintext (separate from the patch); see
  70         the various ChangeLog files for format and content. Note that,
  71         unlike some other projects, we do require ChangeLogs also for
  72         documentation (i.e., .texi files).
  73
  74         The patch itself.  If you are accessing the git repository, use
  75         "git diff", remembering first to update to the current master;
  76         else, use "diff -up OLD NEW". If your version of diff does not
  77         support these options, then get the latest version of GNU diff.
  78
  79         We accept patches as plain text (preferred for the compilers
  80         themselves), MIME attachments (preferred for the web pages),
  81         or as uuencoded gzipped text.
  82
  83         When you have all these pieces, bundle them up in a mail
  84         message and send it to gdb-patches@sourceware.org. All
  85         patches and related discussion should be sent to the
  86         gdb-patches mailinglist. For further information on the GDB
  87         git repository, see the Anonymous read-only git access and
  88         Read-write git access page.
  89
  90 --
  91
  92 Supplemental information for GDB:
  93
  94 o       Please try to run the relevant testsuite before and after
  95         committing a patch
  96
  97         If the contributor doesn't do it then the maintainer will.  A
  98         contributor might include before/after test results in their
  99         contribution.
 100
 101
 102 o       For bug fixes, please try to include a way of
 103         demonstrating that the patch actually fixes something.
 104
 105         The best way of doing this is to ensure that the
 106         testsuite contains one or more test cases that
 107         fail without the fix but pass with the fix.
 108
 109         People are encouraged to submit patches that extend
 110         the testsuite.
 111
 112
 113 o       Please read your patch before submitting it.
 114
 115         A patch containing several unrelated changes or
 116         arbitrary reformats will be returned with a request
 117         to re-formatting / split it.
 118
 119
 120 o       If ``gdb/configure.ac'' is modified then you don't
 121         need to include patches to the regenerated file
 122         ``configure''.
 123
 124         The maintainer will re-generate those files
 125         using autoconf (2.64 as of 2009-08-22).
 126
 127
 128 o       If ``gdb/gdbarch.sh'' is modified, you don't
 129         need to include patches to the generated files
 130         ``gdbarch.h'' and ``gdbarch.c''.
 131
 132         See ``gdb/configure.ac'' above.
 133
 134
 135 o       When submitting a patch that fixes a bug
 136         in GDB's bug database a brief reference
 137         to the bug can be included in the ChangeLog
 138         vis
 139
 140         * CONTRIBUTE: Mention PR convention.
 141         Fix PR gdb/4705.
 142
 143         The text ``PR gdb/4705'' should also be included
 144         in the git commit message.  That causes the
 145         patch to automatically be archived with the PR.