GNULib
======

GNULib is inteded to be the canonical source for most of the important
"Portability" files for GNU projects.

While portability is not one of our primary goals, it has helped
introduce many people to the GNU system, and is worthwhile when it can
be acheived at a low cost.  This collection helps lower that cost.

There are three directories that contain all of the files:

gpl/   - Any source files licensed under the GNU General Public License
lgpl/  - Any source files licensed under the GNU Lesser GPL
doc/   - Any documents that may be nice to have in applications.  This
includes such files as 'COPYING, COPYING.LIB, etc.'

Contributing to GNULib
======================

All software here is Copyright (c) Free Software Foundation - you need
to have filled out an assignment form for a project that uses the
module for that contribution to be accepted here.

If you have a piece of code that you would like to contribute, please
email bug-gnulib@gnu.org.  We will add you to the maintainers list.

Generally we are looking for files that fulfill at least one of the
following requirements:

    * If your .c and .h files define functions that are broken or
missing on some other system, we should be able to include it.

    * If your functions remove arbitrary limits from existing
functions (either under the same name, or as a slightly different
name), we should be able to include it.

If your functions define completely new but rarely used functionality,
you should probably consider packaging it as a separate library.

How to add a new module
-----------------------

* Add the header files and source files to lib/.
* If the module needs configure-time checks, write an autoconf
  macro for it in m4/<module>.m4. See m4/README for details.
* Write a module description modules/<module>, based on modules/TEMPLATE.
* Add the module to the list in MODULES.html.sh.

You can test that a module builds correctly with:
  $ ./gnulib-tool --create-testdir --dir=/tmp/testdir module1 ... moduleN
  $ cd /tmp/testdir
  $ ./configure && make

Other things:
* Check the license and copyright year of headers.
* Add source files to config/srclist* if they are identical to upstream
  and should be upgraded in gnulib whenever the upstream source changes.
* Include header files in source files to verify the function prototypes.
* Make sure a replacement function doesn't cause warnings or clashes on
  systems that have the function.
* Autoconf functions can use gl_* prefix. The AC_* prefix is for
  autoconf internal functions.
* Try to prevent that the files are built if they aren't needed on a
  platform.  Valid excuses to this rule include ELIDE constructs that
  lead to an empty .o file (see getopt module).
* If you have a .c file that leads to an empty .o file on some platforms
  (through some big #if around all the code), still make sure that after
  preprocessing the compilation unit is not empty. This is usually fulfilled
  if you #include <stdio.h> or #include <sys/types.h> before the big #if;
  otherwise you need to add a #else branch containing "typedef int dummy;"
  or "extern int dummy;".

High Quality
============

We will be developing a testsuite for these applications.  The goal is
to have a 100% firm interface so that maintainers can feel free to
update to the code in CVS at *any* time and know that their
application will not break.  This means that before any change can be
committed to the repository, a test suite program must be produced
that exposes the bug for regression testing.  All experimental work
should be done on branches to help promote this.

CVS
===

GNULib is available for anonymous checkout.  In any Bourne-shell the
following should work:

$ cvs -d :pserver:anoncvs@cvs.gnu.org:/cvsroot/gnulib login
(Just hit Enter or Return when prompt for a password)
$ cvs -d :pserver:anoncvs@cvs.gnu.org:/cvsroot/gnulib checkout gnulib