1 This file attempts to describe the rules to use when hacking Bison.
2 Don't put this file into the distribution.
4 Everything related to the development of Bison is on Savannah:
6 http://savannah.gnu.org/projects/bison/
11 ** If you incorporate a change from somebody on the net:
12 First, if it is a large change, you must make sure they have signed
13 the appropriate paperwork. Second, be sure to add their name and
14 email address to THANKS.
16 ** If a change fixes a test, mention the test in the commit message.
19 If somebody reports a new bug, mention his name in the commit message
20 and in the test case you write. Put him into THANKS.
22 The correct response to most actual bugs is to write a new test case
23 which demonstrates the bug. Then fix the bug, re-run the test suite,
24 and check everything in.
30 Which include serious bug fixes, must be mentioned in NEWS.
33 Only user visible strings are to be translated: error messages, bits
34 of the .output file etc. This excludes impossible error messages
35 (comparable to assert/abort), and all the --trace output which is
36 meant for the maintainers only.
39 Do not add horizontal tab characters to any file in Bison's repository
40 except where required. For example, do not use tabs to format C code.
41 However, make files, ChangeLog, and some regular expressions require
42 tabs. Also, test cases might need to contain tabs to check that Bison
43 properly processes tabs in its input.
46 * Working from the repository
48 These notes intend to help people working on the checked-out sources.
49 These requirements do not apply when building from a distribution tarball.
53 We've opted to keep only the highest-level sources in the repository. This
54 eases our maintenance burden, (fewer merges etc.), but imposes more
55 requirements on anyone wishing to build from the just-checked-out sources.
56 For example, you have to use the latest stable versions of the maintainer
57 tools we depend upon, including:
59 - Autoconf <http://www.gnu.org/software/autoconf/>
60 - Automake <http://www.gnu.org/software/automake/>
61 - Flex <http://www.gnu.org/software/flex/>
62 - Gettext <http://www.gnu.org/software/gettext/>
63 - Graphviz <http://www.graphviz.org>
64 - Gzip <http://www.gnu.org/software/gzip/>
65 - Perl <http://www.cpan.org/>
66 - Rsync <http://samba.anu.edu.au/rsync/>
67 - Tar <http://www.gnu.org/software/tar/>
69 Valgrind <http://valgrind.org/> is also highly recommended, if it supports
72 Bison is written using Bison grammars, so there are bootstrapping issues.
73 The bootstrap script attempts to discover when the C code generated from the
74 grammars is out of date, and to bootstrap with an out-of-date version of the
75 C code, but the process is not foolproof. Also, you may run into similar
76 problems yourself if you modify Bison.
78 Only building the initial full source tree will be a bit painful. Later,
79 after synchronizing from the repository a plain 'make' should be sufficient.
80 Note, however, that when gnulib is updated, running './bootstrap' again
85 Obviously, if you are reading these notes, you did manage to check out
86 this package from the repository. For the record, you will find all the
87 relevant information on:
89 http://savannah.gnu.org/git/?group=bison
91 Bison uses Git submodules: subscriptions to other Git repositories.
92 In particular it uses gnulib, the GNU portability library. To ask Git
93 to perform the first checkout of the submodules, run
95 $ git submodule update --init
97 Git submodule support is weak before versions 1.6 and later, you
98 should probably upgrade Git if your version is older.
100 The next step is to get other files needed to build, which are
101 extracted from other source packages:
105 And there you are! Just
111 At this point, there should be no difference between your local copy,
116 should output no difference.
122 The use of submodules make things somewhat different because git does
123 not support recursive operations: submodules must be taken care of
124 explicitly by the user.
128 If you pull a newer version of a branch, say via "git pull", you might
129 import requests for updated submodules. A simple "git diff" will
130 reveal if the current version of the submodule (i.e., the actual
131 contents of the gnulib directory) and the current request from the
132 subscriber (i.e., the reference of the version of gnulib that the
133 Bison repository requests) differ. To upgrade the submodules (i.e.,
134 to check out the version that is actually requested by the subscriber,
135 run "git submodule update".
138 $ git submodule update
140 *** Updating a submodule
141 To update a submodule, say gnulib, do as follows:
143 Get the most recent version of the master branch from git.
147 $ git checkout -b master --track origin/master
149 Make sure Bison can live with that version of gnulib.
155 Register your changes.
159 For a suggestion of what gnulib commit might be stable enough for a
160 formal release, see the ChangeLog in the latest gnulib snapshot at:
162 http://erislabs.net/ianb/projects/gnulib/
164 The Autoconf files we use are currently:
167 lib/m4sugar/m4sugar.m4
168 lib/m4sugar/foreach.m4
170 These files don't change very often in Autoconf, so it should be
171 relatively straight-forward to examine the differences in order to
172 decide whether to update.
181 The default is for make check to run all tests sequentially. This can be
182 very time consumming when checking repeatedly or on slower setups. This can
183 be sped up in two ways:
185 Using -j, in a make-like fashion, for example:
186 $ make check TESTSUITEFLAGS='-j8'
188 Running only the tests of a certain category, as specified in the AT files
189 with AT_KEYWORDS([[category]]). Categories include:
190 - c++, for c++ parsers
191 - deprec, for tests concerning deprecated constructs.
192 - glr, for glr parsers
193 - java, for java parsers
194 - report, for automaton dumps
196 To run a specific set of tests, use -k (for "keyword"). For example:
197 $ make check TESTSUITEFLAGS='-k c++'
199 Both can be combined.
202 If the test suite shows failures such as the following one
204 .../bison/lib/getopt.h:196:8: error: redefinition of 'struct option'
205 /usr/include/getopt.h:54:8: error: previous definition of 'struct option'
207 it probably means that some file was compiled without
208 AT_DATA_SOURCE_PROLOGUE. This error is due to the fact that our -I options
209 pick up gnulib's replacement headers, such as getopt.h, and this will go
210 wrong if config.h was not included first.
212 See tests/local.at for details.
214 ** make maintainer-check-valgrind
215 This target uses valgrind both to check bison, and the generated parsers.
217 This is not mature on Mac OS X. First, Valgrind does support the way bison
218 calls m4, so Valgrind cannot be used to check bison on Mac OS X.
220 Second, there are many errors that come from the platform itself, not from
221 bison. build-aux/darwin11.4.0.valgrind addresses some of them.
223 Third, valgrind issues warnings such as:
225 --99312:0:syswrap- WARNING: Ignoring sigreturn( ..., UC_RESET_ALT_STACK );
227 which cause the test to fail uselessly. It is hard to ignore these errors
228 with a major overhaul of the way instrumentation is performed in the test
229 suite. So currently, do not try to run valgrind on Mac OS X.
232 Try to run the test suite with more severe conditions before a
235 - Configure the package with --enable-gcc-warnings, so that one checks
236 that 1. Bison compiles cleanly, 2. the parsers it produces compile
239 - Maybe build with -DGNULIB_POSIXCHECK, which suggests gnulib modules
240 that can fix portability issues. See if you really want to pay
241 attention to its warnings; there's no need to obey blindly to it
242 (<http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bison-patches/2012-05/msg00057.html>).
244 - Check with "make syntax-check" if there are issues diagnosed by
247 - run "make maintainer-check" which:
248 - runs "valgrind -q bison" to run Bison under Valgrind.
249 - runs the parsers under Valgrind.
250 - runs the test suite with G++ as C compiler...
252 - run "make maintainer-push-check", which runs "make maintainer-check"
253 while activating the push implementation and its pull interface wrappers
254 in many test cases that were originally written to exercise only the
255 pull implementation. This makes certain the push implementation can
256 perform every task the pull implementation can.
258 - run "make maintainer-xml-check", which runs "make maintainer-check"
259 while checking Bison's XML automaton report for every working grammar
260 passed to Bison in the test suite. The check just diffs the output of
261 Bison's included XSLT style sheets with the output of --report=all and
264 - running "make maintainer-release-check" takes care of running
265 maintainer-check, maintainer-push-check and maintainer-xml-check.
267 - Change tests/atlocal/CFLAGS to add your preferred options. For
268 instance, "-traditional" to check that the parsers are K&R. Note
269 that it does not make sense for glr.c, which should be ANSI, but
270 currently is actually GNU C, nor for lalr1.cc.
272 - Test with a very recent version of GCC for both C and C++. Testing
273 with older versions that are still in use is nice too.
277 This section needs to be updated to take into account features from
278 gnulib. In particular, be sure to read README-release.
280 ** Update the submodules. See above.
282 ** Update maintainer tools, such as Autoconf. See above.
284 ** Try to get the *.pot files to the Translation Project at least one
285 week before a stable release, to give them time to translate them.
286 Before generating the *.pot files, make sure that po/POTFILES.in and
287 runtime-po/POTFILES.in list all files with translatable strings.
288 This helps: grep -l '\<_(' *
293 ** Update the foreign files
294 Running "./bootstrap" in the top level should update them all for you.
295 This covers PO files too. Sometimes a PO file contains problems that
296 causes it to be rejected by recent Gettext releases; please report
297 these to the Translation Project.
300 Make sure the information in README is current. Most notably, make sure
301 it recommends a version of GNU M4 that is compatible with the latest
304 ** Check copyright years.
305 We update years in copyright statements throughout Bison once at the
306 start of every year by running "make update-copyright". However, before
307 a release, it's good to verify that it's actually been run. Besides the
308 copyright statement for each Bison file, check the copyright statements
309 that the skeletons insert into generated parsers, and check all
310 occurrences of PACKAGE_COPYRIGHT_YEAR in configure.ac.
312 ** Update NEWS, commit and tag.
313 See do-release-commit-and-tag in README-release. For a while, we used
314 beta names such as "2.6_rc1". Now that we use gnulib in the release
315 procedure, we must use "2.5.90", which has the additional benefit of
316 being properly sorted in "git tag -l".
318 ** make alpha, beta, or stable
322 There are two ways to upload the tarballs to the GNU servers: using
323 gnupload (from gnulib), or by hand. Obviously prefer the former. But
324 in either case, be sure to read the following paragraph.
329 Make sure your public key has been uploaded at least to
330 keys.gnupg.net. You can upload it with:
332 gpg --keyserver keys.gnupg.net --send-keys F125BDF3
334 where F125BDF3 should be replaced with your key ID.
339 At the end "make stable" (or alpha/beta) will display the procedure to
340 run. Just copy and paste it in your shell.
344 The generic GNU upload procedure is at:
346 http://www.gnu.org/prep/maintain/maintain.html#Automated-FTP-Uploads
348 Follow the instructions there to register your information so you're permitted
351 Here's a brief reminder of how to roll the tarballs and upload them:
354 *** gpg -b bison-2.3b.tar.gz
355 *** In a file named "bison-2.3b.tar.gz.directive", type:
359 filename: bison-2.3b.tar.gz
361 *** gpg --clearsign bison-2.3b.tar.gz.directive
362 *** ftp ftp-upload.gnu.org # Log in as anonymous.
363 *** cd /incoming/alpha # cd /incoming/ftp for full release.
364 *** put bison-2.3b.tar.gz # This can take a while.
365 *** put bison-2.3b.tar.gz.sig
366 *** put bison-2.3b.tar.gz.directive.asc
367 *** Repeat all these steps for bison-2.3b.tar.xz.
369 ** Update Bison manual on www.gnu.org.
371 *** You need a non-anonymous checkout of the web pages directory.
373 $ cvs -d YOUR_USERID@cvs.savannah.gnu.org:/web/bison checkout bison
375 *** Get familiar with the instructions for web page maintainers.
376 http://www.gnu.org/server/standards/readme_index.html
377 http://www.gnu.org/server/standards/README.software.html
378 especially the note about symlinks.
380 *** Build the web pages.
381 Assuming BISON_CHECKOUT refers to a checkout of the Bison dir, and
382 BISON_WWW_CHECKOUT refers to the web directory created above, do:
384 $ cd $BISON_CHECKOUT/doc
386 $ ../build-aux/gendocs.sh -o "$BISON_WWW_CHECKOUT/manual" \
387 bison "Bison - GNU parser generator"
388 $ cd $BISON_WWW_CHECKOUT
390 Verify that the result looks sane.
392 *** Commit the modified and the new files.
394 *** Remove old files.
395 Find the files which have not been overwritten (because they belonged to
396 sections that have been removed or renamed):
398 $ cd manual/html_node
401 Remove these files and commit their removal to CVS. For each of these
402 files, add a line to the file .symlinks. This will ensure that
403 hyperlinks to the removed files will redirect to the entire manual; this
404 is better than a 404 error.
406 There is a problem with 'index.html' being written twice (once for POSIX
407 function 'index', once for the table of contents); you can ignore this
411 The "make stable" (or alpha/beta) command just created a template,
412 $HOME/announce-bison-X.Y. Otherwise, to generate it, run:
414 make RELEASE_TYPE=alpha gpg_key_ID=F125BDF3 announcement
416 where alpha can be replaced by beta or stable and F125BDF3 should be
417 replaced with your key ID.
419 Complete/fix the announcement file. The generated list of recipients
420 (info-gnu@gnu.org, bug-bison@gnu.org, help-bison@gnu.org,
421 bison-patches@gnu.org, and coordinator@translationproject.org) is
422 appropriate for a stable release or a "serious beta". For any other
423 release, drop at least info-gnu@gnu.org. For an example of how to
424 fill out the rest of the template, search the mailing list archives
425 for the most recent release announcement.
427 For a stable release, send the same announcement on the comp.compilers
428 newsgroup by sending email to compilers@iecc.com. Do not make any Cc as
429 the moderator will throw away anything cross-posted or Cc'ed. It really
430 needs to be a separate message.
433 So that developers don't accidentally add new items to the old NEWS
434 entry, create a new empty entry in line 3 (without the two leading
437 * Noteworthy changes in release ?.? (????-??-??) [?]
443 Copyright (C) 2002-2005, 2007-2013 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
445 This file is part of GNU Bison.
447 This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
448 it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
449 the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
450 (at your option) any later version.
452 This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
453 but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
454 MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
455 GNU General Public License for more details.
457 You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
458 along with this program. If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.
460 LocalWords: Automake Autoconf Gettext Gzip Rsync Valgrind gnulib submodules
461 LocalWords: submodule init cd distcheck checkin ChangeLog valgrind sigreturn
462 LocalWords: UC gcc DGNULIB POSIXCHECK xml XSLT glr lalr README po runtime rc
463 LocalWords: gnupload gnupg gpg keyserver BDF ncftp filename clearsign cvs dir
464 LocalWords: symlinks vti html lt POSIX Cc'ed