This file contains guidelines for using GnuCash from a git repository.

They have been adapted from the guidelines for gnome-libs by

Miguel de Icaza who adapted them from guidelines written by

Owen Taylor.

Autotools specific information in this file was removed in Jan 2018

by Rob Gowin as part of the transition to CMake.

When making changes to GnuCash and trying to commit to the repository:

+ Ask first. If your changes are major, or could possibly break existing

code, you should always ask. If your change is minor and you have

been working on gnucash for a while it is probably not necessary

to ask. But when in doubt, ask. Even if your change is correct,

somebody may know a better way to do things.

Since you want other people to review your code before it goes in,

you can submit your changes as a patch to [email protected].

See README for details.

If you are making changes to gnucash, you should be subscribed

to [email protected] and to [email protected].

(Subscription address: https://www.gnucash.org/en/lists.phtml)

[email protected] is a good place to ask about intended

changes.

+ You must not break the build! Never check in changes that do not

compile, install or run. Just because your local tree compiles

doesn't mean you are done. The most common way to break the build

is to forget to add new files or directories to git. But it is easy

to fix this problem: Clone your local repo, but never make changes

in it. After you have committed a set of changes, cd to the clone,

run git pull, build and make distcheck. If that passes, it's safe

to push.

+ It's wise to do major work in a branch. That allows you to keep the

rest of your repo up to date. It's also better to commit small

changes often rather than to make a single large change. Run make

check often so that you can quickly find errors.

+ When code is added from new developers, add them to AUTHORS and to

doc/sgml/C/xacc-about.sgml.

Dave Peticolas

June 21, 2002

Derek Atkins

November 21, 2002

Neil Williams

November 6th, 2005