-*- mode:outline -*- * Introduction ============== You are running a potentially unstable version of XEmacs. Please do not report problems with Beta XEmacs to comp.emacs.xemacs. Report them to xemacs-beta@xemacs.org. ** Mailing Lists ================ *** XEmacs Beta Mailing List ---------------------------- If you are not subscribed to the XEmacs beta list you should be. Currently all discussion of development issues, including bug reports and coding discussion, takes place on the XEmacs Beta mailing list. Only patches and administrative actions regarding patches are sent elsewhere (to the XEmacs Patches list). ** XEmacs Patches Mailing List ============================== XEmacs Patches records proposed changes to XEmacs, and their disposition. It is open subscription, but only patches and actions by members of the XEmacs Review Board should be posted to this list. You can follow progress of your patch by subscribing to the mailing list or in the archives. ** List Administrivia ===================== In the descriptions below, the word LIST (all uppercase) is a variable. Substitute "beta" or "patches" as appropriate (to get "xemacs-beta" as the mailbox for the XEmacs Beta mailing list, or http://www.xemacs.org/Lists/#xemacs-beta for its URL). The XEmacs mailing lists are managed by the Mailman mailing list package, and the usual Mailman commands work. Do not send mailing list requests to the main address (xemacs-LIST@xemacs.org), always send them to xemacs-LIST-request@xemacs.org. If you have problems with the list itself, they should be brought to the attention of the XEmacs Mailing List manager (the same mailbox, "list-manager", for all lists). All public mailing lists have searchable archives. The URL is http://list-archive.xemacs.org/xemacs-LIST *** Managing your subscription via the Web ------------------------------------------ Subscription, unsubscription, and options (such as digests and temporarily suspending delivery) can be accomplished via the web interface at http://www.xemacs.org/Lists/#xemacs-LIST. *** Subscribing by e-mail ------------------------- Send an email message to xemacs-LIST-request@xemacs.org with `subscribe' (without the quotes) as the BODY of the message. *** Unsubscribing by e-mail --------------------------- Send an email message to xemacs-LIST-request@xemacs.org with `unsubscribe' (without the quotes) as the BODY of the message. ** Beta Release Schedule ======================== Betas are now released rather sporadically. We would like to achieve a weekly release schedule, but personnel availability does not permit. For access to the most recent code, use CVS (see http://www.xemacs.org/Develop/cvsaccess.html for more information). If you have need for FTP access, please let us know. It will make it more likely that we release betas more often. ** Reporting Problems ===================== The best way to get problems fixed in XEmacs is to submit good problem reports. Since this is beta software, problems are certain to exist. Please read through all of part II of the XEmacs FAQ for an overview of problem reporting. Other items which are most important are: 1. Do not submit C stack backtraces without line numbers. Since it is possible to compile optimized with debug information with GCC it is never a good idea to compile XEmacs without the -g flag. XEmacs runs on a variety of platforms, and often it is not possible to recreate problems which afflict a specific platform. The line numbers in the C stack backtrace help isolate where the problem is actually occurring. 2. Attempt to recreate the problem starting with an invocation of XEmacs with `xemacs -q -no-site-file -no-autoloads'. Quite often, problems are due to package interdependencies, and the like. An actual bug in XEmacs should be reproducible in a default configuration without loading any special packages (or the one or two specific packages that cause the bug to appear). If you have trouble getting anything to work at all with the above invocation, use `xemacs -q -no-site-file' instead. If you need to load your user init file or the site file to get the problem to occur, then it has something to do with them, and you should try to isolate the issue in those files. 3. A picture can be worth a thousand words. When reporting an unusual display, it is generally best to capture the problem in a screen dump and include that with the problem report. The easiest way to get a screen dump is to use the xv program and its grab function. Save the image as a GIF to keep bandwidth requirements down without loss of information. MIME is the preferred method for making the image attachments. ** Getting the Source ===================== In addition to the normal tar distribution, XEmacs source is now available via CVS. Please see http://www.xemacs.org/Develop/cvsaccess.html * Compiling Beta XEmacs ======================= ** Building an XEmacs from patches ================================== All beta releases of XEmacs are included with patches from the previous version in an attempt to keep bandwidth requirements down. Patches should be applied with the GNU patch program in something like the following. Let's say you're upgrading XEmacs 20.15-beta10 to XEmacs 20.15-beta11 and you have a full unmodified XEmacs 20.15-beta10 source tree to work with. Cd to the top level directory and issue the shell command: $ gunzip -c /tmp/xemacs-20.15-b10-20.15-b11.patch.gz | patch -p1 After patching, check to see that no patches were missed by doing $ find . -name \*.rej -print Any rejections should be treated as serious problems to be resolved before building XEmacs. After seeing that there were no rejections, issue the commands $ ./config.status --recheck $ make beta and go play minesweep for a while on an older XEmacs while the binary is rebuilt. ** Building XEmacs from a full distribution =========================================== Locate a convenient place where you have at least 100MB of free space and issue the command $ gunzip -c /tmp/xemacs-20.15-b11.tar.gz | tar xvf - (or simply `tar zxvf /tmp/xemacs-20.15-b11.tar.gz' if you use GNU tar). cd to the top level directory and issue an appropriate configure command. One maintainer uses the following at the time of this writing: ./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 Part of the configure output is a summary that looks something like the following. (In XEmacs 21.1 and later, this summary is also available as the file Installation in the top directory of your build tree, and via the command M-x describe-installation.) uname -a: Linux altair.xemacs.org 2.0.32 #2 Sun Nov 16 18:52:14 PST 1997 i586 ./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' XEmacs 21.0-b34 "Oberhasli-pre2" configured for `i586-pc-linux'. Where should the build process find the source code? /home/xemacs/xemacs-20.0 What installation prefix should install use? /usr/local What operating system and machine description files should XEmacs use? `s/linux.h' and `m/intel386.h' What compiler should XEmacs be built with? gcc -mpentium -march=pentium -O6 -g -fno-peep-spills Should XEmacs use the GNU version of malloc? yes (Using Doug Lea's new malloc from the GNU C Library.) Should XEmacs use the relocating allocator for buffers? yes What window system should XEmacs use? x11 Where do we find X Windows header files? /usr/X11/include Where do we find X Windows libraries? /usr/X11/lib Compiling in support for XAUTH. Compiling in support for XPM images. Compiling in support for X-Face message headers. Compiling in support for GIF image conversion. Compiling in support for JPEG image conversion. Compiling in support for PNG image conversion. Compiling in support for TIFF image conversion. Compiling in native sound support. Compiling in support for Berkeley DB. Compiling in support for GNU DBM. Compiling in support for ncurses. Compiling in support for GPM (General Purpose Mouse). Compiling in Mule (multi-lingual) support. Compiling in XIM (X11R5+ I18N input method) support. Using raw Xlib to provide XIM support. Using XFontSet to provide bilingual menubar. Compiling in support for Canna on Mule. Compiling in support for the WNN input method on Mule. Using WNN version 6. Compiling in support for OffiX. Compiling in support for proper session-management. Using Lucid menubars. Using Athena-3d scrollbars. Using Athena-3d dialog boxes. Compiling in DLL support. movemail will use "dot-locking" for locking mail spool files. Using Lisp_Objects with minimal tagbits. Compiling in extra code for debugging. Compiling in code for checking XEmacs memory usage. WARNING: --------------------------------------------------------- WARNING: Compiling in support for runtime error checking. WARNING: XEmacs will run noticeably more slowly as a result. WARNING: Error checking is on by default for XEmacs beta releases. WARNING: --------------------------------------------------------- Then type `make' and you should have a working XEmacs. After you have verified that you have a functional editor, fire up your favorite mail program and send a build report to xemacs-build-reports@xemacs.org. Preferrably this is done from XEmacs, following these simple steps: M-x customize-group RET build-report RET M-x build-report RET See also http://www.xemacs.org/Releases/Public-21.2/tester.html#reporting If you create the report manually by other means, here is what the build report should include: 1. Your hardware configuration (OS version, etc.) 2. Version numbers of software in use (X11 version, system library versions if appropriate, graphics library versions if appropriate). If you're on a system like Linux, include all the version numbers you can because chances are it makes a difference. 3. The options given to configure 4. The configuration report illustrated above For convenience all of the above items are placed in a file called `Installation' in the top level build directory. They are also available by performing M-x describe-installation inside XEmacs. 5. Any other unusual items you feel should be brought to the attention of the developers. * Packages ========== [Note: these instructions have been partly updated, but not carefully reviewed in some time. Caveat tester.] Starting with XEmacs 21.1, much of the functionality of XEmacs has been unbundled into "the packages." For more information about the package system, see the Info nodes on Packages (in the XEmacs User Manual) and on Packaging (in the Lisp Reference). When bootstrapping XEmacs, you may need to manually install some packages (at least xemacs-base and efs). These packages are available by FTP at ftp://ftp.xemacs.org/pub/xemacs/packages/. ** Binary package installation ============================== Prerequisite: XEmacs 21.0-b1. Binary packages are complete entities that can be untarred at the top level of an XEmacs package hierarchy and work at runtime. To install files in this directory, run the command `M-x package-admin-add-binary-package' and fill in appropriate values to the prompts. ** Manual procedures for package management =========================================== Prerequisite: XEmacs 21.0 When adding and deleting files from a lisp directory the auto-autoloads.el (global symbols) and custom-load.el (Customization groups) must be kept in synch. Assuming one is manipulating a directory called `lisp-utils', the command to rebuild the auto-autoloads.el file is: xemacs -vanilla -batch -l autoload -f batch-update-directory lisp-utils The command to rebuild the custom-load.el file is: xemacs -vanilla -batch -l cus-dep -f Custom-make-dependencies lisp-utils To bytecompile both of these files the command is: xemacs -vanilla -batch -f batch-byte-compile \ lisp-utils/auto-autoloads.el lisp-utils/custom-load.el ** Building XEmacs and XEmacs packages from scratch =================================================== To build everything completely from scratch (not a high priority as a design goal), the following procedure should work. (I don't recommend building this way). *** Phase 1 -- Get a minimal XEmacs binary with mule to build the package lisp with. **** Grab a mule-base tarball and install it into a newly created package directory. **** Configure XEmacs with mule and a package-path including the directory created above. **** Do a `make dist' to build an XEmacs binary. *** Phase 2 -- Build and install the package lisp. **** Modify XEmacs.rules for local paths and the XEmacs binary created in Phase 1. **** Do a make from the top level package lisp source directory.[1] **** Do `make bindist's on all the packages you wish to install and remove the byproduct .tar.gz's. *** Phase 3 -- If necessary, redump XEmacs with the packages that require dump-time support and install it. **** Reconfigure without Mule if you don't wish a Mule-ish XEmacs, and rebuild XEmacs. - or - **** rm lib-src/DOC src/xemacs; make **** Install or run in-place. Note that this is in essence what `make all-elc' has always done. * Improving XEmacs ================= ** Creating patches for submission ================================== Patches to XEmacs should be mailed to . Each patch will be reviewed by the patches review board, and will be acknowledged and added to the distribution, or rejected with an explanation. Progress of the patch is tracked on the XEmacs Patches mailing list, which is open subscription. Patches to XEmacs Lisp packages should be sent to the maintainer of the package. If the maintainer is listed as `XEmacs Development Team' patches should be sent to . Emailed patches should preferably be sent in MIME format and quoted printable encoding (if necessary). The simplest way to create well-formed patches is to use CVS and Didier Verna's Patcher library (available as patcher.el in the xemacs-devel package). Patcher is new and requires some setup, but most of the core developers are now using it for their own patches. Patcher also can be configured to create patches for several projects, and recognize the project from the directory it is invoked in. This makes it a useful general tool (as long as XEmacs-style patches are accepted at your other projects, which is likely since they conform to the GNU standards). When making patches by hand, please use the `-u' option, or if your diff doesn't support it, `-c'. Using ordinary (context-free) diffs are notoriously prone to error, since line numbers tend to change when others make changes to the same source file. An example of the `diff' usage: $ diff -u OLDFILE NEWFILE -or- $ diff -c OLDFILE NEWFILE Also, it is helpful if you create the patch in the top level of the XEmacs source directory: $ cp -p lwlib/xlwmenu.c lwlib/xlwmenu.c.orig hack, hack, hack.... $ diff -u lwlib/xlwmenu.c.orig lwlib/xlwmenu.c Also note that if you cut & paste from an xterm to an XEmacs mail buffer you will probably lose due to tab expansion. The best thing to do is to use an XEmacs shell buffer to run the diff commands, or ... M-x cd to the appropriate directory, and issue the command `C-u M-!' from within XEmacs. Patches should be as single-minded as possible. Mammoth patches can be very difficult to place into the right slot. They are much easier to deal with when broken down into functional or conceptual chunks. The patches submitted by Kyle Jones and Hrvoje Niksic are stellar examples of how to Do The Right Thing. Each patch should be accompanied by an update to the appropriate ChangeLog file. Guidelines for writing ChangeLog entries is governed by the GNU coding standards. Please see http://www.gnu.org/prep/standards_toc.html [Change Logs section] for details. Do not submit context diffs (either -c or -u) of ChangeLogs. Because of the "stack" nature of ChangeLogs (new entries are always pushed on the top), context diffs will fail to apply more often than they succeed. Simply cutting and pasting the entry from an Emacs buffer to the mail buffer (beware of tab expansion!) is probably easiest. The Patcher library also will set up your ChangeLogs for you, and copy them to the mail. Contextless unified diffs (-U 0) are also acceptable but perhaps more trouble than they are worth. *** Patch discussion etiquette ------------------------------- If you intend a patch for _application_ to the sources as is, _always_ post it to xemacs-patches, even if there are minor points you would like to have discussed by others. Not doing so will resulting in patches getting "lost". If you expect that the patch will not be acceptable, but are using it to stimulate discussion, then don't post to xemacs-patches. Intermediate cases are up to your judgement; unless you're sure you'll follow up with a "real" patch, better to err on the side of posting to xemacs-patches. Discussion of the _content_ of the patch (ie responses to reviewer comments beyond "that's right, ok, I'll do it your way") should _always_ be posted to xemacs-beta. (We may split xemacs-beta into code discussion and stuff that is more relevant to non-developer testers at some point, but at this point xemacs-beta is the correct place for this.) If discussion results in a bright idea and you come up with a new patch, normally you should post it to both mailing lists. The people discussing on XEmacs Beta will want to know the outcome of the thread, and you need to submit to XEmacs Patches as the "list of record." If the old patch has been applied to CVS, then just submit the new one as usual. If it has not been applied, then it is best to submit a new patch against CVS. If possible do this as a reply to the original patch post, or something following it in the thread. (The point is to get the original patch post's Message-ID in your References header.) In this case, also use the keyword SUPERCEDES in the Subject header to indicate that the old patch is no longer valid, and that this one replaces it. These rules will result in a fair number of cross posts, but we don't yet have a better way to handle that. Note: Developers should never post to xemacs-patches unless there is a patch in the post. We plan to enforce this with an automatic filter. The exceptions are administrative. If you have commit authorization, then post a short COMMIT notice to xemacs-patches when you commit to CVS. Members of the Review Board will also post short notices of administrative action (APPROVE, VETO, QUERY, etc) to xemacs-patches. ** Large contributions ====================== Perhaps you have a whole new mode, or a major synchronization with upstream for a neglected package, or a synchronization with GNU Emacs you would like to contribute. We welcome such contributions, but they are likely to be relatively controversial, generate more comments and requests for revision, and take longer to integrate. Please be patient with the process. *** Updates to existing packages -------------------------------- If a package has gotten a bit out of date, or even started to bitrot, we welcome patches to synchronize it with upstream/GNU Emacs versions. Most packages end up varying somewhat from their GNU origins. See "Syncing with GNU Emacs" for hints. Note that if you do a reasonably large amount of syncing with GNU Emacs, you should log this in the file itself as well as in the ChangeLog. If the package is important to you, please consider becoming the maintainer. (See "New packages", below.) *** New packages ---------------- If you have a new mode or other large addition that does not require changes to the core, please consider submitting it as a package, and becoming the maintainer. You get direct commit privileges to the repository for your package, "approval" privileges for your own patches as well as third party patches to your package, and some degree of veto power over patches you don't like. In return, you are expected to maintain friendly liaison with the upstream developer (if you aren't the upstream developer), keep watch on the XEmacs Patches list for relevant patches, and be available by email to other developers for discussion of changes that impact your package. It's also a pretty standard route to the "core" development group, where we have plenty of extra work waiting for volunteers. You don't have to become the maintainer, but it virtually ensures rapid acceptance of the package. For help in creating new packages, see the (rather sparse) discussions in the XEmacs User's Guide and the Lisp Reference Manual. The XEmacs Package Release Engineer (Ville Skyttä is currently serving with Peter Brown assisting; Steve Youngs and Stephen Turnbull also can help) is the most likely source of advice. *** Syncing with GNU Emacs -------------------------- Syncing with GNU Emacs is an important activity. Although each version has its advantages and areas of concentration, it is very desirable that common functionality share specifications and APIs. When porting GNU code to XEmacs, the following points should be given special attention: o Recent GNU Emacsen cannot be built without Mule, but XEmacs can. Make sure your changes do not assume the presence of Mule. o GNU Emacs nomenclature often differs from that of XEmacs. Sometimes syncing the names is desirable, other times not. o GNU Emacs functionality often differs from that of XEmacs. Syncing functionality is often controversial. It is important that you let other developers know that synchronization has taken place, to what degree, and when. For this purpose, we use comments of the form /* Synched up with: FSF 21.3 by Stephen Turnbull */ in the source file itself, as the last element of the prefatory material (copyright notice and commentary). Obviously the comment marker needs to be changed to leading semicolons for Lisp, but otherwise the format is the same. Of course you should note syncing as the purpose in the ChangeLog, too. But entries get buried deep in the ChangeLog file, and may even get moved to a separate ChangeLog.OLD file for rarely synched files. Rather than dates we use the version of GNU Emacs to sync to. If the synchronization is partial, add a new comment describing what has actually been synched, leaving the description of the last full sync in place. At each full sync, remove all previous synchronization comments. This applies to Lisp that we have broken out into packages, but remains in the GNU Emacs core, as well to core Lisp in XEmacs.