--- /dev/null
+
+ Contributing to GDB
+
+GDB is a collaborative project and one which wants to encourage new
+development. You may wish to fix GDB bugs, improve testing, port GDB
+to a new platform, update documentation, add new GDB features, and the
+like. To help with this, there is a lot of documentation
+available.. In addition to the user guide and internals manual
+included in the GDB distribution, the GDB web pages also contain much
+information.
+
+You may also want to submit your change so that can be considered for
+conclusion in a future version of GDB (see below). Regardless, we
+encourage you to distribute the change yourself.
+
+If you don't feel up to hacking GDB, there are still plenty of ways to
+help! You can answer questions on the mailing lists, write
+documentation, find bugs, create a GDB related website (contribute to
+the official GDB web site), or create a GDB related software
+package. We welcome all of the above and feel free to ask on the GDB
+mailing lists if you are looking for feedback or for people to review
+a work in progress.
+
+Ref: http://sourceware.cygnus.com/gdb
+
+Finally, there are certain legal requirements and style issues which
+all contributors need to be aware of.
+
+o Coding Standards
+
+ All contributions must conform to the GNU Coding Standard.
+ http://www.gnu.ai.mit.edu/prep/standards_toc.html
+ Submissions which do not conform to the standards will be
+ returned with a request to reformat the changes.
+
+ For GDB, that standard is more tightly defined. GDB's
+ coding standard is determined by the output of
+ gnu-indent.
+
+ This situation came about because, by the start of '99,
+ GDB's coding style was so bad an inconsistent that it was
+ decided to restart things from scratch.
+
+
+o Copyright Assignment
+
+ There are certain legal requirements
+
+ Before we can accept code contributions from you, we need a
+ copyright assignment form filled out.
+
+ If you've developed some addition or patch to GDB that you
+ would like to contribute, you should fill out a copyright
+ assignment form and send it in to the FSF. We are unable to
+ use code from you until this is on-file at the FSF, so get
+ that paperwork in! This form covers one batch of changes.
+ Ref: http://gcc.gnu.org/fsf-forms/assignment-instructions.html
+
+ If you think you're going to be doing continuing work on GDB, it
+ would be easier to use a different form, which arranges to
+ assign the copyright for all your future changes to GDB. It is
+ called assign.future. Please note that if you switch
+ employers, the new employer will need to fill out the
+ disclaim.future form; there is no need to fill out the
+ assign.future form again.
+ Ref: http://gcc.gnu.org/fsf-forms/assign.future
+ Ref: http://gcc.gnu.org/fsf-forms/disclaim.future
+
+ There are several other forms you can fill out for different
+ circumstances (e.g. to contribute an entirely new program, to
+ contribute significant changes to a manual, etc.)
+ Ref: http://gcc.gnu.org/fsf-forms/copyrights.html
+
+ Small changes can be accepted without a copyright assignment
+ form on file.
+
+ This is pretty confusing! If you are unsure of what is
+ necessary, just ask the GDB mailing list and we'll figure out
+ what is best for you.
+
+ Note: Many of these forms have a place for "name of
+ program". Insert the name of one program in that place -- in
+ this case, "GDB".
+
+
+o Submitting Patches
+
+ Every patch must have several pieces of information before we
+ can properly evaluate it.
+
+ A description of the bug and how your patch fixes this
+ bug. A reference to a testsuite failure is very helpful. For
+ new features a description of the feature and your
+ implementation.
+
+ A ChangeLog entry as plaintext (separate from the patch); see
+ the various ChangeLog files for format and content. Note that,
+ unlike some other projects, we do require ChangeLogs also for
+ documentation (i.e., .texi files).
+
+ The patch itself. If you are accessing the CVS repository at:
+ Cygnus, use "cvs update; cvs diff -c3p"; else, use "diff -c3p
+ OLD NEW" or "diff -up OLD NEW". If your version of diff does
+ not support these options, then get the latest version of GNU
+ diff.
+
+ We accept patches as plain text (preferred for the compilers
+ themselves), MIME attachments (preferred for the web pages),
+ or as uuencoded gzipped text.
+
+ When you have all these pieces, bundle them up in a mail
+ message and send it to gdb-patches@sourceware.cygnus.com. All
+ patches and related discussion should be sent to the
+ gdb-patches mailinglist. For further information on the GDB
+ CVS repository, see the Anonymous read-only CVS access and
+ Read-write CVS access page.
+
+--
+
+Supplemental information for GDB:
+
+o Please try to run the relevant testsuite before and after
+ committing a patch
+
+ If the contributor doesn't do it then the maintainer will. A
+ contributor might include before/after test results in their
+ contribution.
+
+
+o For bug fixes, please try to include a way of
+ demonstrating that the patch actually fixes something.
+
+ The best way of doing this is to ensure that the
+ testsuite contains one or more test cases that
+ fail without the fix but pass with the fix.
+
+ People are encouraged to submit patches that extend
+ the testsuite.
+
+
+o Please read your patch before submitting it.
+
+ A patch containing several unrelated changes or
+ arbitrary reformats will be returned with a request
+ to re-formatting / split it.
+
projects / binutils-gdb.git / commitdiff