3 @setfilename gnus-coding
4 @settitle Gnus Coding Style and Maintainance Guide
10 Copyright (c) 2004, 2005 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
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14 under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.1 or
15 any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no
16 Invariant Sections, with the Front-Cover texts being ``A GNU
17 Manual'', and with the Back-Cover Texts as in (a) below. A copy of the
18 license is included in the section entitled ``GNU Free Documentation
19 License'' in the Emacs manual.
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34 @title Gnus Coding Style and Maintainance Guide
36 @author by Reiner Steib <Reiner.Steib@@gmx.de>
41 @c Obviously this is only a very rudimentary draft. We put it in CVS
42 @c anyway hoping that it might annoy someone enough to fix it. ;-)
43 @c Fixing only a paragraph also is appreciated.
46 @top Gnus Coding Style and Maintainance Guide
47 This manual describes @dots{}
49 * Gnus Coding Style:: Gnus Coding Style
50 * Gnus Maintainance Guide:: Gnus Maintainance Guide
53 @node Gnus Coding Style
54 @chapter Gnus Coding Style
57 The Gnus distribution contains a lot of libraries that have been written
58 for Gnus and used intensively for Gnus. But many of those libraries are
59 useful on their own. E.g. other Emacs Lisp packages might use the
60 @acronym{MIME} library @xref{Top, ,Top, emacs-mime, The Emacs MIME
63 @subsection General purpose libraries
68 @file{.netrc} parsing functionality.
69 @c As of 2005-10-21...
70 There are no Gnus dependencies in this file.
73 Functions for formatting arbitrary formatting strings.
74 @c As of 2005-10-21...
75 There are no Gnus dependencies in this file.
79 @subsection Encryption and security
83 File encryption routines
84 @c As of 2005-10-25...
85 There are no Gnus dependencies in this file.
88 Read passwords from user, possibly using a password cache.
89 @c As of 2005-10-21...
90 There are no Gnus dependencies in this file.
93 TLS/SSL support via wrapper around GnuTLS
94 @c As of 2005-10-21...
95 There are no Gnus dependencies in this file.
98 Glue for the various PGP implementations.
99 @c As of 2005-10-21...
100 There are no Gnus dependencies in these files.
104 @subsection Networking
108 Domain Name System dig interface.
109 @c As of 2005-10-21...
110 There are no serious Gnus dependencies in this file. Uses
111 @code{gnus-run-mode-hooks} (a wrapper function).
114 Domain Name Service lookups.
115 @c As of 2005-10-21...
116 There are no Gnus dependencies in these files.
119 @subsection Mail and News related RFCs
123 Post Office Protocol (RFC 1460) interface.
124 @c As of 2005-10-21...
125 There are no Gnus dependencies in this file.
128 @acronym{IMAP} library.
129 @c As of 2005-10-21...
130 There are no Gnus dependencies in this file.
133 Functions for parsing RFC822bis headers.
134 @c As of 2005-10-21...
135 There are no Gnus dependencies in this file.
138 HZ (rfc1843) decoding. HZ is a data format for exchanging files of
139 arbitrarily mixed Chinese and @acronym{ASCII} characters.
140 @c As of 2005-10-21...
141 @code{rfc1843-gnus-setup} seem to be useful only for Gnus. Maybe this
142 function should be relocated to remove dependencies on Gnus. Other
143 minor dependencies: @code{gnus-newsgroup-name} could be eliminated by
144 using an optional argument to @code{rfc1843-decode-article-body}.
147 Functions for decoding rfc2045 headers
150 Functions for encoding and decoding rfc2047 messages
153 RFC2104 Hashed Message Authentication Codes
156 Functions for decoding rfc2231 headers
159 Interpret RFC2646 "flowed" text
160 @c As of 2005-10-27...
161 There are no Gnus dependencies in this file.
166 All message composition from Gnus (both mail and news) takes place in
167 Message mode buffers. Message mode is intended to be a replacement for
168 Emacs mail mode. There should be no Gnus dependencies in
171 @subsection Emacs @acronym{MIME}
173 The files @file{mml*.el} and @file{mm-*.el} provide @acronym{MIME}
174 functionality for Emacs.
176 @acronym{MML} (@acronym{MIME} Meta Language) is supposed to be
177 independent from Gnus. Alas it is not anymore.
180 @subsection Gnus backends
182 The files @file{nn*.el} provide functionality for accessing NNTP
183 (@file{nntp.el}), IMAP (@file{nnimap.el}) and several other Mail back
184 ends (probably @file{nnml.el}, @file{nnfolder.el} and
185 @file{nnmaildir.el} are the most widely used mail back ends).
197 @c tla netrc pop3 dig dns ...
201 @section Compatibility
203 @c Compatibility with XEmacs and older Emacs versions in v5-10 and in
206 No Gnus should work on:
214 Gnus 5.10 should work on:
222 @node Gnus Maintainance Guide
223 @chapter Gnus Maintainance Guide
225 @section Stable and development versions
227 The development of Gnus normally is done on the CVS trunk, i.e. there
228 are no separate branches to develop and test new features. Most of the
229 time, the trunk is developed quite actively with more or less daily
230 changes. Only after a new major release, e.g. 5.10.1, there's usually a
231 feature period of several months. After the release of Gnus 5.10.6 the
232 development of new features started again on the trunk while the 5.10
233 series is continued on the stable branch (v5-10) from which more stable
234 releases will be done when needed (5.10.7, @dots{}).
236 Stable releases of Gnus finally become part of Emacs. E.g. Gnus 5.8
237 became a part of Emacs 21 (relabeled to Gnus 5.9). The 5.10 series will
238 become part of Emacs 22 (as Gnus 5.11).
242 @c Some MIDs related to this follow. Use http://thread.gmane.org/MID
243 @c (and click on the subject) to get the thread on Gmane.
245 @c Some quotes from Miles Bader follow...
247 @c <v9eklyke6b.fsf@marauder.physik.uni-ulm.de>
248 @c <buovfd71nkk.fsf@mctpc71.ucom.lsi.nec.co.jp>
250 In the past, the inclusion of Gnus into Emacs was quite cumbersome. For
251 each change made to Gnus in Emacs repository, it had to be checked that
252 it was applied to the new Gnus version, too. Else, bug fixes done in
253 Emacs repository might have been lost.
255 With the inclusion of Gnus 5.10, Miles Bader has set up an Emacs-Gnus
256 gateway to ensure the bug fixes from Emacs CVS are propagated to Gnus
257 CVS semi-automatically. These bug fixes are installed on the stable
258 branch and on the trunk. Basically the idea is that the gateway will
259 cause all common files in Emacs and Gnus v5-10 to be identical except
260 when there's a very good reason (e.g., the Gnus version string in Emacs
261 says @samp{5.11}, but the v5-10 version string remains @samp{5.10.x}).
262 Furthermore, all changes in these files in either Emacs or the v5-10
263 branch will be installed into the Gnus CVS trunk, again except where
264 there's a good reason.
265 @c (typically so far the only exception has been that the changes
266 @c already exist in the trunk in modified form).
267 Because of this, when the next major version of Gnus will be included in
268 Emacs, it should be very easy -- just plonk in the files from the Gnus
269 trunk without worrying about lost changes from the Emacs tree.
271 The effect of this is that as hacker, you should generally only have to
272 make changes in one place:
276 If it's a file which is thought of as being outside of Gnus (e.g., the
277 new @file{encrypt.el}), you should probably make the change in the Emacs
278 tree, and it will show up in the Gnus tree a few days later.
280 If you don't have Emacs CVS access (or it's inconvenient), you can
281 change such a file in the v5-10 branch, and it should propagate to Emacs
282 CVS -- however, it will get some extra scrutiny (by Miles) to see if the
283 changes are possibly controversial and need discussion on the mailing
284 list. Many changes are obvious bug-fixes however, so often there won't
288 If it's to a Gnus file, and it's important enough that it should be part
289 of Emacs and the v5-10 branch, then you can make the change on the v5-10
290 branch, and it will go into Emacs CVS and the Gnus CVS trunk (a few days
291 later). The most prominent examples for such changes are bug-fixed
292 including improvements on the documentation.
294 If you know that there will be conflicts (perhaps because the affected
295 source code is different in v5-10 and the Gnus CVS trunk), then you can
296 install your change in both places, and when I try to sync them, there
297 will be a conflict -- however, since in most such cases there would be a
298 conflict @emph{anyway}, it's often easier for me to resolve it simply if
299 I see two @samp{identical} changes, and can just choose the proper one,
300 rather than having to actually fix the code.
303 For general Gnus development changes, of course you just make the
304 change on the Gnus CVS trunk and it goes into Emacs a few years
308 Of course in any case, if you just can't wait for me to sync your
309 change, you can commit it in more than one place and probably there will
310 be no problem; usually the changes are textually identical anyway, so
311 can be easily resolved automatically (sometimes I notice silly things in
312 such multiple commits, like whitespace differences, and unify those ;-).
315 @c I do Emacs->Gnus less often (than Gnus->Emacs) because it tends to
316 @c require more manual work.
318 @c By default I sync about once a week. I also try to follow any Gnus
319 @c threads on the mailing lists and make sure any changes being discussed
320 @c are kept more up-to-date (so say 1-2 days delay for "topical" changes).
322 @c <buovfd71nkk.fsf@mctpc71.ucom.lsi.nec.co.jp>
324 @c BTW, just to add even more verbose explanation about the syncing thing:
328 @heading @file{GNUS-NEWS}
330 Starting from No Gnus, the @file{GNUS-NEWS} is created from
331 @file{texi/gnus-news.texi}. Don't edit @file{GNUS-NEWS}. Edit
332 @file{texi/gnus-news.texi}, type @command{make GNUS-NEWS} in the
333 @file{texi} directory and commit @file{GNUS-NEWS} and
334 @file{texi/gnus-news.texi}.
339 @c coding: iso-8859-1