6 You are running an experimental version of XEmacs. Please do not
7 report problems with Beta XEmacs to comp.emacs.xemacs. Report them to
8 xemacs-beta@xemacs.org.
10 ** XEmacs Beta Mailing List
11 ===========================
16 If you are not subscribed to the XEmacs beta list you should be. Send
17 an email message to xemacs-beta-request@xemacs.org with `subscribe'
18 (without the quotes) as the BODY of the message.
23 To unsubscribe from the list send an email message to
24 xemacs-beta-request@xemacs.org with `unsubscribe' (without the quotes)
25 as the BODY of the message.
30 The XEmacs beta list is managed by the Majordomo mailing list package,
31 and the usual Majordomo commands work. Do not send mailing list
32 requests to the main address (xemacs-beta@xemacs.org), always send
33 them to xemacs-beta-request@xemacs.org. If you have problems with the
34 list itself, they should be brought to the attention of the XEmacs
35 Mailing List manager Jason Mastaler <list-manager@xemacs.org>.
38 ** Beta Release Schedule
39 ========================
41 The URL ftp://ftp.xemacs.org/pub/xemacs/beta/README always contains
42 the best estimate of when the next beta XEmacs will be released. For
43 weekend betas the release time is generally in the vicinity of 2PM to
44 5PM US Pacific Time (Universal Time minus 8 hours). For weekday
45 betas, the release time is generally in the vicinity of 8PM to
46 Midnight US Pacific Time on the listed day.
48 Betas are nominally a week apart, scheduled on every Saturday.
49 Midweek releases are made when a serious enough problem warrants it.
55 The best way to get problems fixed in XEmacs is to submit good problem
56 reports. Since this is beta software, problems are certain to exist.
57 Please read through all of part II of the XEmacs FAQ for an overview
58 of problem reporting. Other items which are most important are:
60 1. Do not submit C stack backtraces without line numbers. Since it
61 is possible to compile optimized with debug information with GCC
62 it is never a good idea to compile XEmacs without the -g flag.
63 XEmacs runs on a variety of platforms, and often it is not
64 possible to recreate problems which afflict a specific platform.
65 The line numbers in the C stack backtrace help isolate where the
66 problem is actually occurring.
68 2. Attempt to recreate the problem starting with an invocation of
69 XEmacs with `xemacs -q -no-site-file'. Quite often, problems are
70 due to package interdependencies, and the like. An actual bug in
71 XEmacs should be reproducible in a default configuration without
72 loading any special packages (or the one or two specific packages
73 that cause the bug to appear).
75 3. A picture can be worth a thousand words. When reporting an
76 unusual display, it is generally best to capture the problem in a
77 screen dump and include that with the problem report. The easiest
78 way to get a screen dump is to use the xv program and its grab
79 function. Save the image as a GIF to keep bandwidth requirements
80 down without loss of information. MIME is the preferred method
81 for making the image attachments.
86 In addition to the normal tar distribution, XEmacs source is now
87 available via CVS. Please see the URL: <URL:http://cvs.xemacs.org/~xemacs/>.
89 * Compiling Beta XEmacs
90 =======================
92 ** Building an XEmacs from patches
93 ==================================
95 All beta releases of XEmacs are included with patches from the
96 previous version in an attempt to keep bandwidth requirements down.
97 Patches should be applied with the GNU patch program in something like
98 the following. Let's say you're upgrading XEmacs 20.15-beta10 to
99 XEmacs 20.15-beta11 and you have a full unmodified XEmacs 20.15-beta10
100 source tree to work with. Cd to the top level directory and issue the
103 $ gunzip -c /tmp/xemacs-20.15-b10-20.15-b11.patch.gz | patch -p1
105 After patching, check to see that no patches were missed by doing
106 $ find . -name \*.rej -print
108 Any rejections should be treated as serious problems to be resolved
109 before building XEmacs.
111 After seeing that there were no rejections, issue the commands
113 $ ./config.status --recheck
116 and go play minesweep for a while on an older XEmacs while the binary
119 ** Building XEmacs from a full distribution
120 ==============================================
122 Locate a convenient place where you have at least 100MB of free space
123 and issue the command
125 $ gunzip -c /tmp/xemacs-20.15-b11.tar.gz | tar xvf -
127 (or simply `tar zxvf /tmp/xemacs-20.15-b11.tar.gz' if you use GNU tar).
129 cd to the top level directory and issue an appropriate configure
130 command. One maintainer uses the following at the time of this
134 --cflags="-mpentium -march=pentium -O6 -g -fno-peep-spills" \
135 --error-checking=all --debug=yes \
136 --with-scrollbars=athena3d --with-dialogs=athena3d \
137 --with-mule --with-xfs --with-xim=xlib
139 Part of the configure output is a summary that looks something like:
141 uname -a: Linux altair.xemacs.org 2.0.32 #2 Sun Nov 16 18:52:14 PST 1997 i586
143 ./configure '--cflags=-mpentium -march=pentium -O6 -g -fno-peep-spills' '--error-checking=all' '--debug=yes' '--with-scrollbars=athena3d' '--with-dialogs=athena3d' '--with-mule' '--with-xfs' '--with-xim=xlib'
146 XEmacs 21.0-b34 "Oberhasli-pre2" configured for `i586-pc-linux'.
148 Where should the build process find the source code? /home/xemacs/xemacs-20.0
149 What installation prefix should install use? /usr/local
150 What operating system and machine description files should XEmacs use?
151 `s/linux.h' and `m/intel386.h'
152 What compiler should XEmacs be built with? gcc -mpentium -march=pentium -O6 -g -fno-peep-spills
153 Should XEmacs use the GNU version of malloc? yes
154 (Using Doug Lea's new malloc from the GNU C Library.)
155 Should XEmacs use the relocating allocator for buffers? yes
156 What window system should XEmacs use? x11
157 Where do we find X Windows header files? /usr/X11/include
158 Where do we find X Windows libraries? /usr/X11/lib
159 Compiling in support for XAUTH.
160 Compiling in support for XPM images.
161 Compiling in support for X-Face message headers.
162 Compiling in support for GIF image conversion.
163 Compiling in support for JPEG image conversion.
164 Compiling in support for PNG image conversion.
165 Compiling in support for TIFF image conversion.
166 Compiling in native sound support.
167 Compiling in support for Berkeley DB.
168 Compiling in support for GNU DBM.
169 Compiling in support for ncurses.
170 Compiling in support for GPM (General Purpose Mouse).
171 Compiling in Mule (multi-lingual) support.
172 Compiling in XIM (X11R5+ I18N input method) support.
173 Using raw Xlib to provide XIM support.
174 Using XFontSet to provide bilingual menubar.
175 Compiling in support for Canna on Mule.
176 Compiling in support for the WNN input method on Mule.
178 Compiling in support for OffiX.
179 Compiling in support for proper session-management.
180 Using Lucid menubars.
181 Using Athena-3d scrollbars.
182 Using Athena-3d dialog boxes.
183 Compiling in DLL support.
184 movemail will use "dot-locking" for locking mail spool files.
185 Using Lisp_Objects with minimal tagbits.
186 Compiling in extra code for debugging.
187 Compiling in code for checking XEmacs memory usage.
188 WARNING: ---------------------------------------------------------
189 WARNING: Compiling in support for runtime error checking.
190 WARNING: XEmacs will run noticeably more slowly as a result.
191 WARNING: Error checking is on by default for XEmacs beta releases.
192 WARNING: ---------------------------------------------------------
196 Then type `make' and you should have a working XEmacs.
198 After you have verified that you have a functional editor, fire up
199 your favorite mail program and send a build report to
200 xemacs-build-reports@xemacs.org. The build report should include
202 1. Your hardware configuration (OS version, etc.)
204 2. Version numbers of software in use (X11 version, system library
205 versions if appropriate, graphics library versions if appropriate).
206 If you're on a system like Linux, include all the version numbers
207 you can because chances are it makes a difference.
209 3. The options given to configure
211 4. The configuration report illustrated above
213 For convenience all of the above items are placed in a file called
214 `Installation' in the top level build directory. They are also
215 available by performing M-x describe-installation inside XEmacs.
217 5. Any other unusual items you feel should be brought to the attention
220 ** Creating patches for submission
221 ==================================
223 Patches to XEmacs should be mailed to <xemacs-patches@xemacs.org>.
224 Each patch will be reviewed by the patches review board, and will be
225 acked and added to the distribution, or rejected with an explanation.
227 Patches to XEmacs Lisp packages should be sent to the maintainer of
228 the package. If the maintainer is listed as `XEmacs Development Team'
229 patches should be sent to <xemacs-patches@xemacs.org>.
231 Emailed patches should preferably be sent in MIME format and quoted
232 printable encoding (if necessary).
234 When making patches, please use the `-u' option, or if your diff
235 doesn't support it, `-c'. Using ordinary (context-free) diffs are
236 notoriously prone to error, since line numbers tend to change when
237 others make changes to the same source file.
239 An example of the `diff' usage:
241 $ diff -u OLDFILE NEWFILE
245 $ diff -c OLDFILE NEWFILE
247 Also, it is helpful if you create the patch in the top level of the
248 XEmacs source directory:
250 $ cp -p lwlib/xlwmenu.c lwlib/xlwmenu.c.orig
252 $ diff -u lwlib/xlwmenu.c.orig lwlib/xlwmenu.c
254 Each patch should be accompanied by an update to the appropriate
255 ChangeLog file. Please don't mail patches to ChangeLog because they
256 have an extremely high rate of failure; just mail us the new part of
257 the ChangeLog you added.
259 Also note that if you cut & paste from an xterm to an XEmacs mail buffer
260 you will probably lose due to tab expansion. The best thing to do is
261 to use an XEmacs shell buffer to run the diff commands, or ...
262 M-x cd to the appropriate directory, and issue the command `C-u M-!' from
265 Guidelines for writing ChangeLog entries is governed by the GNU coding
266 standards. Please see
267 http://www.gnu.org/prep/standards_toc.html [Change Logs section]
270 Patches should be as single-minded as possible. Mammoth patches can
271 be very difficult to place into the right slot. They are much easier
272 to deal with when broken down into functional or conceptual chunks.
273 The patches submitted by Kyle Jones and Hrvoje Niksic are stellar
274 examples of how to Do The Right Thing.
276 ** Packages directory on the FTP Site
277 =====================================
279 The packages directory
280 ftp://ftp.xemacs.org/pub/xemacs/beta/xemacs-21.0/packages/
282 is divided into subdirectory by the major type of package.
284 drwxr-xr-x 2 beta-f beta-f 1024 Oct 10 00:43 binary-packages
285 drwxr-xr-x 2 beta-f beta-f 512 Oct 10 00:44 package-sources
286 drwxr-xr-x 2 beta-f beta-f 512 Oct 10 00:44 utils
288 ** Support Utilities (utils)
289 ============================
291 The utils directory contains tools to deal with current Lisp sources that
292 have not had yet gotten XEmacs package integration. The script `xpackage.sh'
293 is used with Quassia Gnus. Edit the appropriate variables at the top of
294 the script to reflect the local configuration and run it in the top level
295 directory of a Quassia Gnus source tree to install an update to Quassia Gnus.
297 ** Binary package installation (binary-packages)
298 ================================================
300 Prerequisite: XEmacs 21.0-b1.
302 Binary packages are complete entities that can be untarred at the top
303 level of an XEmacs package hierarchy and work at runtime. To install files
304 in this directory, run the command `M-x package-admin-add-binary-package'
305 and fill in appropriate values to the prompts.
307 ** Manual procedures for package management
308 ===========================================
310 Prerequisite: XEmacs 21.0
312 When adding and deleting files from a lisp directory the
313 auto-autoloads.el (global symbols) and custom-load.el (Customization
314 groups) must be kept in synch. Assuming one is manipulating a
315 directory called `lisp-utils', the command to rebuild the
316 auto-autoloads.el file is:
318 xemacs-21.0 -vanilla -batch -l autoload -f batch-update-directory lisp-utils
320 The command to rebuild the custom-load.el file is:
322 xemacs-21.0 -vanilla -batch -l cus-dep \
323 -f Custom-make-dependencies lisp-utils
325 To bytecompile both of these files the command is:
327 xemacs-21.0 -vanilla -batch -f batch-byte-compile \
328 lisp-utils/auto-autoloads.el lisp-utils/custom-load.el
330 ** Building XEmacs and XEmacs packages from scratch
331 ===================================================
333 To build everything completely from scratch (not a high priority as a
334 design goal), the following procedure should work. (I don't recommend
337 *** Phase 1 -- Get a minimal XEmacs binary with mule to build the package
340 **** Grab a mule-base tarball and install it into a newly created package
343 **** Configure XEmacs with mule and a package-path including the
344 directory created above.
346 **** Do a `make dist' to build an XEmacs binary.
348 *** Phase 2 -- Build and install the package lisp.
350 **** Modify XEmacs.rules for local paths and the XEmacs binary created in
353 **** Do a make from the top level package lisp source directory.[1]
355 **** Do `make bindist's on all the packages you wish to install and
356 remove the byproduct .tar.gz's.
358 *** Phase 3 -- If necessary, redump XEmacs
359 with the packages that require dump-time support and install it.
361 **** Reconfigure without Mule if you don't wish a Mule-ish XEmacs, and
366 **** rm lib-src/DOC src/xemacs; make
368 **** Install or run in-place.
370 Note that this is in essence what `make all-elc' has always done.