* README-hacking: New file, taken mostly from coreutils, with changes

[bison.git] / README-hacking

-*- outline -*-

These notes intend to help people working on the checked-out sources.
These requirements do not apply when building from a distribution tarball.

* Requirements

We've opted to keep only the highest-level sources in the repository.
This eases our maintenance burden, (fewer merges etc.), but imposes more
requirements on anyone wishing to build from the just-checked-out sources.
For example, you have to use the latest stable versions of the maintainer
tools we depend upon, including:

- Automake <http://www.gnu.org/software/automake/>
- Autoconf <http://www.gnu.org/software/autoconf/>
- Flex <http://www.gnu.org/software/flex/>
- Gettext <http://www.gnu.org/software/gettext/>
- Gzip <http://www.gnu.org/software/gzip/>
- Tar <http://www.gnu.org/software/tar/>
- Wget <http://www.gnu.org/software/wget/>

Only building the initial full source tree will be a bit painful.
Later, after synchronizing from the repository a plain `make' should
be sufficient.

Valgrind <http://valgrind.org/> is also highly recommended, if
Valgrind supports your architecture.

Bison is written using Bison grammars, so there are bootstrapping
issues.  The bootstrap script attempts to discover when the C code
generated from the grammars is out of date, and to bootstrap with an
out-of-date version of the C code, but the process is not foolproof.
Also, you may run into similar problems yourself if you modify Bison.

Only building the initial full source tree will be a bit painful,
later, a plain `cvs update -P && make' should be sufficient.

* First checkout

Obviously, if you are reading these notes, you did manage to check out
Bison from the repository.  For the record, you will find all the
relevant information on:

	http://savannah.gnu.org/cvs/?group_id=56

The next step is to get other files needed to build, which are
extracted from other source packages:

	$ ./bootstrap

And there you are!  Just

	$ ./configure
	$ make
	$ make check

At this point, there should be no difference between your local copy,
and the master copy:

	$ cvs diff

should output no difference.

Enjoy!

-----

Copyright (C) 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007 Free Software
Foundation, Inc.

This file is part of GNU Bison.

GNU Bison is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
the Free Software Foundation; either version 2, or (at your option)
any later version.

GNU Bison is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
along with Bison; see the file COPYING.  If not, write to
the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor,
Boston, MA 02110-1301, USA.