All you need to know when hacking (modifying) GNU gettext or when building

it off the git repository.

Requirements

============

You will need reasonably recent versions of the build tools:

  * A C compiler; on Cygwin or mingw also a C++ compiler. Such as GNU GCC.

    + Homepage:

      http://gcc.gnu.org/

  * GNU automake

    + Homepage:

      http://www.gnu.org/software/automake/

  * GNU autoconf

    + Homepage:

      http://www.gnu.org/software/autoconf/

  * GNU m4

    + Homepage:

      http://www.gnu.org/software/m4/

  * GNU bison

    + Homepage:

      http://www.gnu.org/software/bison/

  * GNU gperf

    + Homepage:

      http://www.gnu.org/software/gperf/

  * GNU groff 1.17 or newer

    + Homepage:

      http://www.gnu.org/software/groff/

  * GNU texinfo

    + Homepage:

      http://www.gnu.org/software/texinfo/

  * GNU emacs or XEmacs

    + Homepage:

      http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/

      http://www.xemacs.org/

  * Perl

    + Homepage:

      http://www.perl.org/

  * TeX (for making the doc in .dvi, .ps or .pdf format)

    + Homepage:

      http://tug.org/teTeX/

  * Either an internet connection or a recent copy of GNU gnulib.

    + Homepage:

      http://www.gnu.org/software/gnulib/

  * GNU tar (for creating distributable tarballs)

    + Homepage:

      http://www.gnu.org/software/tar/

And, of course, the packages listed in the DEPENDENCIES file.

Building off the git repository

===============================

Access to the git repository is described at

  http://savannah.gnu.org/git/?group=gettext

After fetching the sources from the repository, peek at the comments in

autogen.sh, then run "./autogen.sh"; then you can proceed with "./configure"

as usual.

Submitting patches

==================

Patches should be sent to bug-gettext@gnu.org, the bug/feature mailing

list.  You can subscribe to the mailing list, or see the list

archives, by following links from

http://savannah.gnu.org/mail/?group=gettext .

To email a patch you can use a shell command like 'git format-patch

-1' to create a file, and then attach the file to your email.  

GNU gettext development no longer stores descriptions of new changes

in ChangeLog files.  Instead, a single ChangeLog file is generated

from the commit messages when a release is prepared.  So changes you

commit should not touch any of the ChangeLog files in the repository,

but instead should contain the log entries in the commit message.

For the style of a ChangeLog entry, see the "Change Logs" section of

the GNU coding standards:

  http://www.gnu.org/prep/standards/html_node/Change-Logs.html