Re: [bug-gawk] develop gawk

[arnold]

Hi Saeed.

Andy's answers are all correct, if a bit terse. :-)

Much more detail may found in the gawkworkflow.texi document in
the doc/ directory of the gawk distribution.  You should read that
document, as well as the section in the gawk manual on contributing
to gawk.

Here are the main points, in brief.

1. Contributors are welcome, there's always stuff to do. I'm very glad
that you're interested in contributing!

2. You need to be willing to sign paperwork assigning copyright in your
contributions to the Free Software Foundation.

3. You should be comfortable using Unix/Linux command line tools and
programming in C. You should also be comfortable with Git, although the
above-mentioned document does provide a short primer on its use.

4. As Andy mentioned, new extension libraries are (a) very welcome,
and (b) should go into the gawkextlib project, not the gawk distribution.

5. There is essentially a moratorium on adding new features visible at
the language level to gawk.  (With one possible exception.)  If you have
ideas for new features, you'll have to work to convince me to add them. :-)

6. However code improvements and performance improvements are very
welcome. There is one branch in particular that has been rather neglected
that may offer some nice improvements in memory usage and it'd be great
to have someone tackle it.

7. If you start working on something, the way to submit changes is to
mail patches to this list.  I and the other gawk developers will review
your patches and either merge them as appropriate or give you feedback
about them. (Merging requires that you've signed paperwork.)

8. Assuming that things work well, then eventually you'll be granted
write access to the Git repo.  There is still a review process, but
you'll be able to commit your changes yourself instead of my having to
do it.

In short, talk to me about what you'd like to work on (or what I'd like
you to work on, either way), clone the repo, and dive in!

Much thanks

Arnold


"Andrew J. Schorr" <address@hidden> wrote:

> Hi,
>
> On Thu, Aug 01, 2019 at 11:57:11AM +0430, Saeed Dehqan wrote:
> > How can I develop awk?
>
> Thanks for your interest.
>
> > For example adding a library or improving the speed and GAWK code.
>
> For adding extension libraries, please check out the gawkextlib project here:
>    http://gawkextlib.sourceforge.net/
>
> The core gawk project is hosted here:
>    https://savannah.gnu.org/projects/gawk/
> You can check out the git tree like so:
>    git clone https://git.savannah.gnu.org/git/gawk.git
> and develop patches that you can submit to this list for review.
>
> > Can I add new features and send you a copy to check?
>
> There's a very high hurdle for adding new features to core gawk.
> New extension libraries are definitely welcome.
>
> Regards,
> Andy