coreutils/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.
See also HACKING for more detailed contribution guidelines.

* Requirements

We've opted to keep only the highest-level sources in the GIT repository.
This eases our maintenance burden, (fewer merges etc.), but imposes more
requirements on anyone wishing to build from the just-checked-out sources.
Note the requirements to build the released archive are much less and
are just the requirements of the standard ./configure && make procedure.
Specific development tools and versions will be checked for and listed by
the bootstrap script.  See README-prereq for specific notes on obtaining
these prerequisite tools.

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

While building from a just-cloned source tree may require installing a
few prerequisites, later, a plain 'git pull && make' should be sufficient.

* First GIT checkout

You can get a copy of the source repository like this:

        $ git clone git://git.sv.gnu.org/coreutils
        $ cd coreutils

As an optional step, if you already have a copy of the gnulib git
repository, then you can use it as a reference to reduce download
time and disk space requirements:

        $ export GNULIB_SRCDIR=/path/to/gnulib

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

        $ ./bootstrap

To use the most-recent gnulib (as opposed to the gnulib version that
the package last synchronized to), do this next:

        $ git submodule foreach git pull origin master
        $ git commit -m 'build: update gnulib submodule to latest' gnulib

And there you are!  Just

        $ ./configure --quiet #[--enable-gcc-warnings] [*]
        $ make
        $ make check

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

        $ git diff

should output no difference.

Enjoy!

[*] The --enable-gcc-warnings option is useful only with glibc
and with a very recent version of gcc.  You'll probably also have
to use recent system headers.  If you configure with this option,
and spot a problem, please be sure to send the report to the bug
reporting address of this package, and not to that of gnulib, even
if the problem seems to originate in a gnulib-provided file.

* Submitting patches

If you develop a fix or a new feature, please send it to the
appropriate bug-reporting address as reported by the --help option of
each program.  One way to do this is to use vc-dwim
<https://www.gnu.org/software/vc-dwim/>), as follows.

  Run the command "vc-dwim --initialize" from the top-level directory
  of this package's git-cloned hierarchy.

  Edit the (empty) ChangeLog file that this command creates, creating a
  properly-formatted entry according to the GNU coding standards
  <https://www.gnu.org/prep/standards/html_node/Change-Logs.html>.

  Make your changes.

  Run the command "vc-dwim" and make sure its output (the diff of all
  your changes) looks good.

  Run "vc-dwim --commit".

  Run the command "git format-patch --stdout -1", and email its output
  in, using the output's subject line.

-----

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