-*- outline -*-
+This file attempts to describe the rules to use when hacking Bison.
+Don't put this file into the distribution.
+
+Everything related to the development of Bison is on Savannah:
+
+ http://savannah.gnu.org/projects/bison/
+
+
+* Administrivia
+
+** If you incorporate a change from somebody on the net:
+First, if it is a large change, you must make sure they have signed
+the appropriate paperwork. Second, be sure to add their name and
+email address to THANKS.
+
+** If a change fixes a test, mention the test in the ChangeLog entry.
+
+** Bug reports
+If somebody reports a new bug, mention his name in the ChangeLog entry
+and in the test case you write. Put him into THANKS.
+
+The correct response to most actual bugs is to write a new test case
+which demonstrates the bug. Then fix the bug, re-run the test suite,
+and check everything in.
+
+** You may find it useful to install the git-merge-changelog merge driver:
+
+ http://git.sv.gnu.org/gitweb/?p=gnulib.git;a=blob;f=lib/git-merge-changelog.c
+
+When following the generic installation instructions there, keep in mind that
+your clone of Bison's git repository already contains appropriate
+.gitattributes files, and running Bison's bootstrap script will make the
+necessary changes to .git/config.
+
+
+* Hacking
+
+** Visible changes
+Which include serious bug fixes, must be mentioned in NEWS.
+
+** Translations
+Only user visible strings are to be translated: error messages, bits
+of the .output file etc. This excludes impossible error messages
+(comparable to assert/abort), and all the --trace output which is
+meant for the maintainers only.
+
+
+* Working from the repository
+
These notes intend to help people working on the checked-out sources.
These requirements do not apply when building from a distribution tarball.
-* Requirements
+** 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
- Flex <http://www.gnu.org/software/flex/>
- Gettext <http://www.gnu.org/software/gettext/>
- Gzip <http://www.gnu.org/software/gzip/>
+- Perl <http://www.cpan.org/>
+- Rsync <http://samba.anu.edu.au/rsync/>
- 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.
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.
+Only building the initial full source tree will be a bit painful.
+Later, after synchronizing from the repository a plain `make' should
+be sufficient.
-* First checkout
+** 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
+this package from the repository. For the record, you will find all the
relevant information on:
- http://savannah.gnu.org/cvs/?group_id=56
+ http://savannah.gnu.org/git/?group=bison
+
+Bison uses Git submodules: subscriptions to other Git repositories.
+In particular it uses gnulib, the GNU portability library. To ask Git
+to perform the first checkout of the submodules, run
+
+ $ git submodule update --init
+
+Git submodule support is weak before versions 1.6 and later, you
+should probably upgrade Git if your version is older.
The next step is to get other files needed to build, which are
extracted from other source packages:
- $ ./bootstrap
+ $ ./bootstrap
And there you are! Just
- $ ./configure
- $ make
- $ make check
+ $ ./configure
+ $ make
+ $ make check
At this point, there should be no difference between your local copy,
and the master copy:
- $ cvs diff
+ $ git diff
should output no difference.
Enjoy!
+** Updating
+
+The use of submodules make things somewhat different because git does
+not support recursive operations: submodules must be taken care of
+explicitly by the user.
+
+*** Updating Bison
+
+If you pull a newer version of a branch, say via `git pull', you might
+import requests for updated submodules. A simple `git diff' will
+reveal if the current version of the submodule (i.e., the actual
+contents of the gnulib directory) and the current request from the
+subscriber (i.e., the reference of the version of gnulib that the
+Bison reporitory requests) differ. To upgrade the submodules (i.e.,
+to check out the version that is actually requested by the subscriber,
+run `git submodule update'.
+
+ $ git pull
+ $ git submodule update
+
+*** Updating a submodule
+To update a submodule, say gnulib, do as follows:
+
+Get the most recent version of the master branch from git.
+
+ $ cd gnulib
+ $ git fetch
+ $ git checkout -b master --track origin/master
+
+Make sure Bison can live with that version of gnulib.
+
+ $ cd ..
+ $ ./bootstrap
+ $ make distcheck
+
+Register your changes.
+
+ $ git checkin ...
+
+For a suggestion of what gnulib commit might be stable enough for a
+formal release, see the ChangeLog in the latest gnulib snapshot at:
+
+ http://erislabs.net/ianb/projects/gnulib/
+
+The autoconf files we use are currently:
+
+ m4/m4.m4
+ lib/m4sugar/m4sugar.m4
+ lib/m4sugar/foreach.m4
+
+These files don't change very often in autoconf, so it should be
+relatively straight-forward to examine the differences in order to
+decide whether to update.
+
+* Test suite
+
+** make check
+Use liberally.
+
+** Release checks
+Try to run the test suite with more severe conditions before a
+release:
+
+- Configure the package with --enable-gcc-warnings, so that one checks
+ that 1. Bison compiles cleanly, 2. the parsers it produces compile
+ cleanly too.
+
+- Build with -DGNULIB_POSIXCHECK. It suggests gnulib modules that can
+ fix portability issues.
+
+- run `make maintainer-check' which:
+ - runs `valgrind -q bison' to run Bison under Valgrind.
+ - runs the parsers under Valgrind.
+ - runs the test suite with G++ as C compiler...
+
+- run `make maintainer-push-check', which runs `make maintainer-check'
+ while activating the push implementation and its pull interface wrappers
+ in many test cases that were originally written to exercise only the
+ pull implementation. This makes certain the push implementation can
+ perform every task the pull implementation can.
+
+- run `make maintainer-xml-check', which runs `make maintainer-check'
+ while checking Bison's XML automaton report for every working grammar
+ passed to Bison in the test suite. The check just diffs the output of
+ Bison's included XSLT style sheets with the output of --report=all and
+ --graph.
+
+- Change tests/atlocal/CFLAGS to add your preferred options. For
+ instance, `-traditional' to check that the parsers are K&R. Note
+ that it does not make sense for glr.c, which should be ANSI,
+ but currently is actually GNU C, nor for lalr1.cc.
+
+
+* Release Procedure
+
+** Update the submodules. See above.
+
+** Update maintainer tools, such as Autoconf. See above.
+
+** Try to get the *.pot files to the Translation Project at least one
+week before a stable release, to give them time to translate them.
+Before generating the *.pot files, make sure that po/POTFILES.in and
+runtime-po/POTFILES.in list all files with translatable strings.
+This helps: grep -l '\<_(' *
+
+** Tests
+See above.
+
+** Update the foreign files
+Running `./bootstrap' in the top level should update them all for you.
+This covers PO files too. Sometimes a PO file contains problems that
+causes it to be rejected by recent Gettext releases; please report
+these to the Translation Project.
+
+** Update README
+Make sure the information in README is current. Most notably, make sure
+it recommends a version of GNU M4 that is compatible with the latest
+Bison sources.
+
+** Check copyright years.
+We update years in copyright statements throughout Bison once at the
+start of every year by running `make update-copyright'. However, before
+a release, it's good to verify that it's actually been run. Besides the
+copyright statement for each Bison file, check the copyright statements
+that the skeletons insert into generated parsers, and check all
+occurrences of PACKAGE_COPYRIGHT_YEAR in configure.ac.
+
+** Update NEWS
+The version number, *and* the date of the release (including for
+betas).
+
+** Update ChangeLog
+Should have an entry similar to `Version 1.49b.'.
+
+** Tag the release
+Before Bison will build with the right version number, you must tag the release
+in git. Do this after all other changes. The command is similar to:
+
+ git tag -a v2.3b
+
+The log message can be simply:
+
+ Bison 2.3b
+
+** Push
+Once `make distcheck' passes, push your changes and the tag.
+`git push' without arguments will not push the tag.
+
+** make alpha
+FIXME: `make alpha' is not maintained and is broken. These
+instructions need to be replaced or removed.
+
+Running `make alpha' is absolutely perfect for beta releases: it makes
+the tarballs, the xdeltas, and prepares (in /tmp/) a proto
+announcement. It is so neat, that that's what I use anyway for
+genuine releases, but adjusting things by hand (e.g., the urls in the
+announcement file, the ChangeLog which is not needed etc.).
+
+If it fails, you're on your own...
+
+It requires GNU Make.
+
+** Upload
+The generic GNU upload procedure is at:
+
+ http://www.gnu.org/prep/maintain/maintain.html#Automated-FTP-Uploads
+
+Follow the instructions there to register your information so you're permitted
+to upload. Make sure your public key has been uploaded at least to
+keys.gnupg.net. You can upload it with:
+
+ gpg --keyserver keys.gnupg.net --send-keys F125BDF3
+
+where F125BDF3 should be replaced with your key ID.
+
+Here's a brief reminder of how to roll the tarballs and upload them:
+
+*** make distcheck
+*** gpg -b bison-2.3b.tar.gz
+*** In a file named `bison-2.3b.tar.gz.directive', type:
+
+ version: 1.1
+ directory: bison
+ filename: bison-2.3b.tar.gz
+
+*** gpg --clearsign bison-2.3b.tar.gz.directive
+*** ftp ftp-upload.gnu.org # Log in as anonymous.
+*** cd /incoming/alpha # cd /incoming/ftp for full release.
+*** put bison-2.3b.tar.gz # This can take a while.
+*** put bison-2.3b.tar.gz.sig
+*** put bison-2.3b.tar.gz.directive.asc
+*** Repeat all these steps for bison-2.3b.tar.xz.
+
+** Update Bison manual on www.gnu.org.
+
+*** You need a non-anonymous checkout of the web pages directory.
+
+ $ cvs -d YOUR_USERID@cvs.savannah.gnu.org:/web/bison checkout bison
+
+*** Get familiar with the instructions for web page maintainers.
+http://www.gnu.org/server/standards/readme_index.html
+http://www.gnu.org/server/standards/README.software.html
+especially the note about symlinks.
+
+*** Build the web pages.
+Assuming BISON_CHECKOUT refers to a checkout of the Bison dir, and
+BISON_WWW_CHECKOUT refers to the web directory created above, do:
+
+ $ cd $BISON_CHECKOUT/doc
+ $ make stamp-vti
+ $ ../build-aux/gendocs.sh -o "$BISON_WWW_CHECKOUT/manual" \
+ bison "Bison - GNU parser generator"
+ $ cd $BISON_WWW_CHECKOUT
+
+Verify that the result looks sane.
+
+*** Commit the modified and the new files.
+
+*** Remove old files.
+Find the files which have not been overwritten (because they belonged to
+sections that have been removed or renamed):
+
+ $ cd manual/html_node
+ $ ls -lt
+
+Remove these files and commit their removal to CVS. For each of these
+files, add a line to the file .symlinks. This will ensure that
+hyperlinks to the removed files will redirect to the entire manual; this
+is better than a 404 error.
+
+There is a problem with 'index.html' being written twice (once for POSIX
+function 'index', once for the table of contents); you can ignore this
+issue.
+
+** Announce
+To generate a template announcement file:
+
+ make RELEASE_TYPE=alpha gpg_key_ID=F125BDF3 announcement
+
+where alpha can be replaced by beta or stable and F125BDF3 should be
+replaced with your key ID.
+
+Complete/fix the announcement file. The generated list of recipients
+(info-gnu@gnu.org, bug-bison@gnu.org, help-bison@gnu.org,
+bison-patches@gnu.org, and coordinator@translationproject.org) is
+appropriate for a stable release or a ``serious beta''. For any other
+release, drop at least info-gnu@gnu.org. For an example of how to fill
+out the rest of the template, search the mailing list archives for the
+most recent release announcement.
+
+For a stable release, send the same announcement on the comp.compilers
+newsgroup by sending email to compilers@iecc.com. Do not make any Cc as
+the moderator will throw away anything cross-posted or Cc'ed. It really
+needs to be a separate message.
+
+** Bump the version number
+In configure.ac. Run `make'. So that developers don't accidentally add new
+items to the old NEWS entry, create a new empty NEWS entry something like:
+
+ Changes in version ?.? (????-??-??):
+
+Push these changes.
+
+
-----
-Copyright (C) 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007 Free Software
-Foundation, Inc.
+Copyright (C) 2002-2005, 2007-2012 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
This file is part of GNU Bison.
projects / bison.git / blobdiff