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1 This file attempts to describe the rules to use when hacking Bison.
2 Don't put this file into the distribution.
3
4 Everything related to the development of Bison is on Savannah:
5
6 http://savannah.gnu.org/projects/bison/
7
8
9 * Administrivia
10
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.
15
16 ** If a change fixes a test, mention the test in the commit message.
17
18 ** Bug reports
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.
21
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.
25
26
27 * Hacking
28
29 ** Visible changes
30 Which include serious bug fixes, must be mentioned in NEWS.
31
32 ** Translations
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.
37
38
39 * Working from the repository
40
41 These notes intend to help people working on the checked-out sources.
42 These requirements do not apply when building from a distribution tarball.
43
44 ** Requirements
45
46 We've opted to keep only the highest-level sources in the repository.
47 This eases our maintenance burden, (fewer merges etc.), but imposes more
48 requirements on anyone wishing to build from the just-checked-out sources.
49 For example, you have to use the latest stable versions of the maintainer
50 tools we depend upon, including:
51
52 - Automake <http://www.gnu.org/software/automake/>
53 - Autoconf <http://www.gnu.org/software/autoconf/>
54 - Flex <http://www.gnu.org/software/flex/>
55 - Gettext <http://www.gnu.org/software/gettext/>
56 - Gzip <http://www.gnu.org/software/gzip/>
57 - Perl <http://www.cpan.org/>
58 - Rsync <http://samba.anu.edu.au/rsync/>
59 - Tar <http://www.gnu.org/software/tar/>
60
61 Valgrind <http://valgrind.org/> is also highly recommended, if it supports
62 your architecture.
63
64 Bison is written using Bison grammars, so there are bootstrapping
65 issues. The bootstrap script attempts to discover when the C code
66 generated from the grammars is out of date, and to bootstrap with an
67 out-of-date version of the C code, but the process is not foolproof.
68 Also, you may run into similar problems yourself if you modify Bison.
69
70 Only building the initial full source tree will be a bit painful.
71 Later, after synchronizing from the repository a plain 'make' should
72 be sufficient. Note, however, that when gnulib is updated, running
73 './bootstrap' again might be needed.
74
75 ** First checkout
76
77 Obviously, if you are reading these notes, you did manage to check out
78 this package from the repository. For the record, you will find all the
79 relevant information on:
80
81 http://savannah.gnu.org/git/?group=bison
82
83 Bison uses Git submodules: subscriptions to other Git repositories.
84 In particular it uses gnulib, the GNU portability library. To ask Git
85 to perform the first checkout of the submodules, run
86
87 $ git submodule update --init
88
89 Git submodule support is weak before versions 1.6 and later, you
90 should probably upgrade Git if your version is older.
91
92 The next step is to get other files needed to build, which are
93 extracted from other source packages:
94
95 $ ./bootstrap
96
97 And there you are! Just
98
99 $ ./configure
100 $ make
101 $ make check
102
103 At this point, there should be no difference between your local copy,
104 and the master copy:
105
106 $ git diff
107
108 should output no difference.
109
110 Enjoy!
111
112 ** Updating
113
114 The use of submodules make things somewhat different because git does
115 not support recursive operations: submodules must be taken care of
116 explicitly by the user.
117
118 *** Updating Bison
119
120 If you pull a newer version of a branch, say via "git pull", you might
121 import requests for updated submodules. A simple "git diff" will
122 reveal if the current version of the submodule (i.e., the actual
123 contents of the gnulib directory) and the current request from the
124 subscriber (i.e., the reference of the version of gnulib that the
125 Bison repository requests) differ. To upgrade the submodules (i.e.,
126 to check out the version that is actually requested by the subscriber,
127 run "git submodule update".
128
129 $ git pull
130 $ git submodule update
131
132 *** Updating a submodule
133 To update a submodule, say gnulib, do as follows:
134
135 Get the most recent version of the master branch from git.
136
137 $ cd gnulib
138 $ git fetch
139 $ git checkout -b master --track origin/master
140
141 Make sure Bison can live with that version of gnulib.
142
143 $ cd ..
144 $ ./bootstrap
145 $ make distcheck
146
147 Register your changes.
148
149 $ git checkin ...
150
151 For a suggestion of what gnulib commit might be stable enough for a
152 formal release, see the ChangeLog in the latest gnulib snapshot at:
153
154 http://erislabs.net/ianb/projects/gnulib/
155
156 The Autoconf files we use are currently:
157
158 m4/m4.m4
159 lib/m4sugar/m4sugar.m4
160 lib/m4sugar/foreach.m4
161
162 These files don't change very often in Autoconf, so it should be
163 relatively straight-forward to examine the differences in order to
164 decide whether to update.
165
166 * Test suite
167
168 ** make check
169 Use liberally.
170
171 ** make maintainer-check-valgrind
172 This target uses valgrind both to check bison, and the generated parsers.
173
174 This is not mature on Mac OS X. First, Valgrind does support the way bison
175 calls m4, so Valgrind cannot be used to check bison on Mac OS X.
176
177 Second, there are many errors that come from the platform itself, not from
178 bison. build-aux/darwin11.4.0.valgrind addresses some of them.
179
180 Third, valgrind issues warnings such as:
181
182 --99312:0:syswrap- WARNING: Ignoring sigreturn( ..., UC_RESET_ALT_STACK );
183
184 which cause the test to fail uselessly. It is hard to ignore these errors
185 with a major overhaul of the way instrumentation is performed in the test
186 suite. So currently, do not try to run valgrind on Mac OS X.
187
188 ** Release checks
189 Try to run the test suite with more severe conditions before a
190 release:
191
192 - Configure the package with --enable-gcc-warnings, so that one checks
193 that 1. Bison compiles cleanly, 2. the parsers it produces compile
194 cleanly too.
195
196 - Maybe build with -DGNULIB_POSIXCHECK, which suggests gnulib modules
197 that can fix portability issues. See if you really want to pay
198 attention to its warnings; there's no need to obey blindly to it
199 (<http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bison-patches/2012-05/msg00057.html>).
200
201 - Check with "make syntax-check" if there are issues diagnosed by
202 gnulib.
203
204 - run "make maintainer-check" which:
205 - runs "valgrind -q bison" to run Bison under Valgrind.
206 - runs the parsers under Valgrind.
207 - runs the test suite with G++ as C compiler...
208
209 - run "make maintainer-push-check", which runs "make maintainer-check"
210 while activating the push implementation and its pull interface wrappers
211 in many test cases that were originally written to exercise only the
212 pull implementation. This makes certain the push implementation can
213 perform every task the pull implementation can.
214
215 - run "make maintainer-xml-check", which runs "make maintainer-check"
216 while checking Bison's XML automaton report for every working grammar
217 passed to Bison in the test suite. The check just diffs the output of
218 Bison's included XSLT style sheets with the output of --report=all and
219 --graph.
220
221 - running "make maintainer-release-check" takes care of running
222 maintainer-check, maintainer-push-check and maintainer-xml-check.
223
224 - Change tests/atlocal/CFLAGS to add your preferred options. For
225 instance, "-traditional" to check that the parsers are K&R. Note
226 that it does not make sense for glr.c, which should be ANSI, but
227 currently is actually GNU C, nor for lalr1.cc.
228
229
230 * Release Procedure
231 This section needs to be updated to take into account features from
232 gnulib. In particular, be sure to read README-release.
233
234 ** Update the submodules. See above.
235
236 ** Update maintainer tools, such as Autoconf. See above.
237
238 ** Try to get the *.pot files to the Translation Project at least one
239 week before a stable release, to give them time to translate them.
240 Before generating the *.pot files, make sure that po/POTFILES.in and
241 runtime-po/POTFILES.in list all files with translatable strings.
242 This helps: grep -l '\<_(' *
243
244 ** Tests
245 See above.
246
247 ** Update the foreign files
248 Running "./bootstrap" in the top level should update them all for you.
249 This covers PO files too. Sometimes a PO file contains problems that
250 causes it to be rejected by recent Gettext releases; please report
251 these to the Translation Project.
252
253 ** Update README
254 Make sure the information in README is current. Most notably, make sure
255 it recommends a version of GNU M4 that is compatible with the latest
256 Bison sources.
257
258 ** Check copyright years.
259 We update years in copyright statements throughout Bison once at the
260 start of every year by running "make update-copyright". However, before
261 a release, it's good to verify that it's actually been run. Besides the
262 copyright statement for each Bison file, check the copyright statements
263 that the skeletons insert into generated parsers, and check all
264 occurrences of PACKAGE_COPYRIGHT_YEAR in configure.ac.
265
266 ** Update NEWS, commit and tag.
267 See do-release-commit-and-tag in README-release. For a while, we used
268 beta names such as "2.6_rc1". Now that we use gnulib in the release
269 procedure, we must use "2.5.90", which has the additional benefit of
270 being properly sorted in "git tag -l".
271
272 ** make alpha, beta, or stable
273 See README-release.
274
275 ** Upload
276 There are two ways to upload the tarballs to the GNU servers: using
277 gnupload (from gnulib), or by hand. Obviously prefer the former. But
278 in either case, be sure to read the following paragraph.
279
280 *** Setup
281 You need "gnupg".
282
283 Make sure your public key has been uploaded at least to
284 keys.gnupg.net. You can upload it with:
285
286 gpg --keyserver keys.gnupg.net --send-keys F125BDF3
287
288 where F125BDF3 should be replaced with your key ID.
289
290 *** Using gnupload
291 You need "ncftp".
292
293 At the end "make stable" (or alpha/beta) will display the procedure to
294 run. Just copy and paste it in your shell.
295
296 *** By hand
297
298 The generic GNU upload procedure is at:
299
300 http://www.gnu.org/prep/maintain/maintain.html#Automated-FTP-Uploads
301
302 Follow the instructions there to register your information so you're permitted
303 to upload.
304
305 Here's a brief reminder of how to roll the tarballs and upload them:
306
307 *** make distcheck
308 *** gpg -b bison-2.3b.tar.gz
309 *** In a file named "bison-2.3b.tar.gz.directive", type:
310
311 version: 1.1
312 directory: bison
313 filename: bison-2.3b.tar.gz
314
315 *** gpg --clearsign bison-2.3b.tar.gz.directive
316 *** ftp ftp-upload.gnu.org # Log in as anonymous.
317 *** cd /incoming/alpha # cd /incoming/ftp for full release.
318 *** put bison-2.3b.tar.gz # This can take a while.
319 *** put bison-2.3b.tar.gz.sig
320 *** put bison-2.3b.tar.gz.directive.asc
321 *** Repeat all these steps for bison-2.3b.tar.xz.
322
323 ** Update Bison manual on www.gnu.org.
324
325 *** You need a non-anonymous checkout of the web pages directory.
326
327 $ cvs -d YOUR_USERID@cvs.savannah.gnu.org:/web/bison checkout bison
328
329 *** Get familiar with the instructions for web page maintainers.
330 http://www.gnu.org/server/standards/readme_index.html
331 http://www.gnu.org/server/standards/README.software.html
332 especially the note about symlinks.
333
334 *** Build the web pages.
335 Assuming BISON_CHECKOUT refers to a checkout of the Bison dir, and
336 BISON_WWW_CHECKOUT refers to the web directory created above, do:
337
338 $ cd $BISON_CHECKOUT/doc
339 $ make stamp-vti
340 $ ../build-aux/gendocs.sh -o "$BISON_WWW_CHECKOUT/manual" \
341 bison "Bison - GNU parser generator"
342 $ cd $BISON_WWW_CHECKOUT
343
344 Verify that the result looks sane.
345
346 *** Commit the modified and the new files.
347
348 *** Remove old files.
349 Find the files which have not been overwritten (because they belonged to
350 sections that have been removed or renamed):
351
352 $ cd manual/html_node
353 $ ls -lt
354
355 Remove these files and commit their removal to CVS. For each of these
356 files, add a line to the file .symlinks. This will ensure that
357 hyperlinks to the removed files will redirect to the entire manual; this
358 is better than a 404 error.
359
360 There is a problem with 'index.html' being written twice (once for POSIX
361 function 'index', once for the table of contents); you can ignore this
362 issue.
363
364 ** Announce
365 The "make stable" (or alpha/beta) command just created a template,
366 $HOME/announce-bison-X.Y. Otherwise, to generate it, run:
367
368 make RELEASE_TYPE=alpha gpg_key_ID=F125BDF3 announcement
369
370 where alpha can be replaced by beta or stable and F125BDF3 should be
371 replaced with your key ID.
372
373 Complete/fix the announcement file. The generated list of recipients
374 (info-gnu@gnu.org, bug-bison@gnu.org, help-bison@gnu.org,
375 bison-patches@gnu.org, and coordinator@translationproject.org) is
376 appropriate for a stable release or a "serious beta". For any other
377 release, drop at least info-gnu@gnu.org. For an example of how to
378 fill out the rest of the template, search the mailing list archives
379 for the most recent release announcement.
380
381 For a stable release, send the same announcement on the comp.compilers
382 newsgroup by sending email to compilers@iecc.com. Do not make any Cc as
383 the moderator will throw away anything cross-posted or Cc'ed. It really
384 needs to be a separate message.
385
386 ** Prepare NEWS
387 So that developers don't accidentally add new items to the old NEWS
388 entry, create a new empty entry in line 3 (without the two leading
389 spaces):
390
391 * Noteworthy changes in release ?.? (????-??-??) [?]
392
393 Push these changes.
394
395 -----
396
397 Copyright (C) 2002-2005, 2007-2012 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
398
399 This file is part of GNU Bison.
400
401 This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
402 it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
403 the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
404 (at your option) any later version.
405
406 This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
407 but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
408 MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
409 GNU General Public License for more details.
410
411 You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
412 along with this program. If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.
413
414 LocalWords: Automake Autoconf Gettext Gzip Rsync Valgrind gnulib submodules
415 LocalWords: submodule init cd distcheck checkin ChangeLog valgrind sigreturn
416 LocalWords: UC gcc DGNULIB POSIXCHECK xml XSLT glr lalr README po runtime rc
417 LocalWords: gnupload gnupg gpg keyserver BDF ncftp filename clearsign cvs dir
418 LocalWords: symlinks vti html lt POSIX Cc'ed
419
420 Local Variables:
421 mode: outline
422 fill-column: 76
423 End: