-*- outline -*-

These notes intend to help people working on the checked-out sources.
These requirements do not apply when building from a distribution tarball.

* 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.
For example, you have to use the latest stable versions of the maintainer
tools we depend upon, including:

- Automake <http://www.gnu.org/software/automake/>
- Autoconf <http://www.gnu.org/software/autoconf/>
- Gettext <http://www.gnu.org/software/gettext/>
- Gzip <http://www.gnu.org/software/gzip/>
- M4 <http://www.gnu.org/software/m4/>
- Tar <http://www.gnu.org/software/tar/>
- Wget <http://www.gnu.org/software/wget/>

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

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/patch
        $ cd patch

As an optional step, if you already have a copy of the gnulib git
repository on your hard drive, 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
        $ 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!

* 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
<http://www.gnu.org/software/vc-dwim/>), as follows.

  Run the command "vc-dwim --help", copy its definition of the
  "git-changelog-symlink-init" function into your shell, and then run
  this function at the top-level directory of the package.

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

  Run the command "vc-dwim" and make sure its output 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.

-----

Copyright (C) 2002-2007, 2009-2012 Free Software Foundation, Inc.

This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
(at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
along with this program.  If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.
