1 The guidelines in this file are the ideals; it's better to send a
2 not-fully-following-guidelines patch than no patch at all, though. We
3 can always polish it up.
8 The D-Bus mailing list is dbus@lists.freedesktop.org; discussion
9 of patches, etc. should go there.
14 Most of D-Bus is security sensitive. Guidelines related to that:
16 - avoid memcpy(), sprintf(), strlen(), snprintf, strlcat(),
17 strstr(), strtok(), or any of this stuff. Use DBusString.
18 If DBusString doesn't have the feature you need, add it
21 There are some exceptions, for example
22 if your strings are just used to index a hash table
23 and you don't do any parsing/modification of them, perhaps
24 DBusString is wasteful and wouldn't help much. But definitely
25 if you're doing any parsing, reallocation, etc. use DBusString.
27 - do not include system headers outside of dbus-memory.c,
28 dbus-sysdeps.c, and other places where they are already
29 included. This gives us one place to audit all external
30 dependencies on features in libc, etc.
32 - do not use libc features that are "complicated"
33 and may contain security holes. For example, you probably shouldn't
34 try to use regcomp() to compile an untrusted regular expression.
35 Regular expressions are just too complicated, and there are many
36 different libc's out there.
38 - we need to design the message bus daemon (and any similar features)
39 to use limited privileges, run in a chroot jail, and so on.
41 http://vsftpd.beasts.org/ has other good security suggestions.
46 - The C library uses GNU coding conventions, with GLib-like
47 extensions (e.g. lining up function arguments). The
48 Qt wrapper uses KDE coding conventions.
50 - Write docs for all non-static functions and structs and so on. try
51 "doxygen Doxyfile" prior to commit and be sure there are no
54 - All external interfaces (network protocols, file formats, etc.)
55 should have documented specifications sufficient to allow an
56 alternative implementation to be written. Our implementation should
57 be strict about specification compliance (should not for example
58 heuristically parse a file and accept not-well-formed
59 data). Avoiding heuristics is also important for security reasons;
60 if it looks funny, ignore it (or exit, or disconnect).
65 D-Bus uses Git as its version control system. The main repository is
66 hosted at git.freedesktop.org/dbus/dbus. To clone D-Bus, execute the
69 git clone git://git.freedesktop.org/dbus/dbus
71 git clone git.freedesktop.org:dbus/dbus
73 The latter form is the one that allows pushing, but it also requires
74 an SSH account on the server. The former form allows anonymous
77 D-Bus development happens in two branches in parallel: the current
78 stable branch, with an even minor number (like 1.0, 1.2 and 1.4), and
79 the next development branch, with the next odd number.
81 The stable branch is named after the version number itself (dbus-1.2,
82 dbus-1.4), whereas the development branch is simply known as "master".
84 When making a change to D-Bus, do the following:
86 - check out the earliest branch of D-Bus that makes sense to have
87 your change in. If it's a bugfix, it's normally the current stable
88 branch; if it's a feature, it's normally the "master" branch. If
89 you have an important security fix, you may want to apply to older
93 if you're developing a new, large feature, it's recommended
94 to create a new branch and do your development there. Publish
95 your branch at a suitable place and ask others to help you
96 develop and test it. Once your feature is considered finalised,
97 you may merge it into the "master" branch.
100 . make your change to the source code
101 . execute tests to guarantee that you're not introducing a
102 regression. For that, execute: make check
103 (if possible, add a new test to check the fix you're
105 . commit your change using "git commit"
106 in the commit message, write a short sentence describing what
107 you did in the first line. Then write a longer description in
108 the next paragraph(s).
109 . repeat the previous steps if necessary to have multiple commits
111 - extract your patches and send to the D-Bus mailing list for
112 review or post them to the D-Bus Bugzilla, attaching them to a bug
113 report. To extract the patches, execute:
114 git format-patch origin/master
116 - once your code has been reviewed, you may push it to the Git
118 git push origin my-branch:remote
120 git push origin dbus-X.Y
122 git push origin master
123 (consult the Git manual to know which command applies)
125 - (Optional) if you've not worked on "master", merge your changes to
126 that branch. If you've worked on an earlier branch than the current
127 stable, merge your changes upwards towards the stable branch, then
128 from there into "master".
130 . execute: git checkout master
131 . ensure that you have the latest "master" from the server, update
133 . execute: git merge dbus-X.Y
134 . if you have any conflicts, resolve them, git add the conflicted
135 files and then git commit
136 . push the "master" branch to the server as well
138 Executing this merge is recommended, but not necessary for all
139 changes. You should do this step if your bugfix is critical for the
140 development in "master", or if you suspect that conflicts will arise
141 (you're usually the best person to resolve conflicts introduced by
142 your own code), or if it has been too long since the last merge.
148 To make a release of D-Bus, do the following:
150 - check out a fresh copy from Git
152 - verify that the libtool versioning/library soname is
153 changed if it needs to be, or not changed if not
155 - update the file NEWS based on the ChangeLog
157 - update the AUTHORS file based on the ChangeLog
159 - add a ChangeLog entry containing the version number
160 you're releasing ("Released 0.3" or something)
161 so people can see which changes were before and after
164 - the version number should have major.minor.micro even
165 if micro is 0, i.e. "1.0.0" and "1.2.0" not "1.0"/"1.2"
167 - "make distcheck" (DO NOT just "make dist" - pass the check!)
169 - if make distcheck fails, fix it.
171 - once distcheck succeeds, "git commit -a". This is the version
172 of the tree that corresponds exactly to the released tarball.
174 - tag the tree with "git tag -s -m 'Released X.Y.Z' dbus-X.Y.Z"
175 where X.Y.Z is the version of the release. If you can't sign
176 then simply created an unsigned annotated tag:
177 "git tag -a -m 'Released X.Y.Z' dbus-X.Y.Z".
179 - bump the version number up in configure.in, and commit
180 it. Make sure you do this *after* tagging the previous
181 release! The idea is that git has a newer version number
182 than anything released.
184 - merge the branch you've released to the chronologically-later
185 branch (usually "master"). You'll probably have to fix a merge
186 conflict in configure.in (the version number).
188 - push your changes and the tag to the central repository with
189 git push origin master dbus-X.Y dbus-X.Y.Z
191 - scp your tarball to freedesktop.org server and copy it to
192 dbus.freedesktop.org:/srv/dbus.freedesktop.org/www/releases/dbus/dbus-X.Y.Z.tar.gz.
193 This should be possible if you're in group "dbus"
195 - Update the online documentation with `make -C doc maintainer-upload-docs`.
197 - update the wiki page http://www.freedesktop.org/Software/dbus by
198 adding the new release under the Download heading. Then, cut the
199 link and changelog for the previous that was there.
201 - update the wiki page
202 http://www.freedesktop.org/Software/DbusReleaseArchive pasting the
203 previous release. Note that bullet points for each of the changelog
204 items must be indented three more spaces to conform to the
205 formatting of the other releases there.
207 - post to dbus@lists.freedesktop.org announcing the release.
210 After making a ".0" stable release
213 After releasing, when you increment the version number in git, also
214 move the ChangeLog to ChangeLog.pre-X-Y where X-Y is what you just
215 released, e.g. ChangeLog.pre-1-0. Then create and cvs add a new empty
216 ChangeLog. The last entry in ChangeLog.pre-1-0 should be the one about
219 Add ChangeLog.pre-X-Y to EXTRA_DIST in Makefile.am.
221 We create a branch for each stable release; sometimes the branch is
222 not done immediately, instead it's possible to wait until someone has
223 a not-suitable-for-stable change they want to make and then branch to
224 allow committing that change.
226 The branch name should be dbus-X.Y-branch which is a branch that has
227 releases versioned X.Y.Z
230 git branch dbus-X.Y-branch
231 and upload the branch tag to the server:
232 git-push origin dbus-X.Y-branch
234 To develop in this branch:
235 git-checkout dbus-X.Y-branch
237 Environment variables
240 These are the environment variables that are used by the D-Bus client library
243 Turns on printing verbose messages. This only works if D-Bus has been
244 compiled with --enable-verbose-mode
246 DBUS_MALLOC_FAIL_NTH=n
247 Can be set to a number, causing every nth call to dbus_alloc or
248 dbus_realloc to fail. This only works if D-Bus has been compiled with
251 DBUS_MALLOC_FAIL_GREATER_THAN=n
252 Can be set to a number, causing every call to dbus_alloc or
253 dbus_realloc to fail if the number of bytes to be allocated is greater
254 than the specified number. This only works if D-Bus has been compiled with
257 DBUS_TEST_MALLOC_FAILURES=n
258 Many of the D-Bus tests will run over and over, once for each malloc
259 involved in the test. Each run will fail a different malloc, plus some
260 number of mallocs following that malloc (because a fair number of bugs
261 only happen if two or more mallocs fail in a row, e.g. error recovery
262 that itself involves malloc). This env variable sets the number of
264 Here's why you care: If set to 0, then the malloc checking is skipped,
265 which makes the test suite a heck of a lot faster. Just run with this
266 env variable unset before you commit.
271 These are the test programs that are built if dbus is compiled using
275 This is the main unit test program that tests all aspects of the D-Bus
279 This it the unit test program for the message bus.
282 A test that tries to break the message loader by passing it randomly
283 created invalid messages.
286 This is a suite of programs which are run with a temporary session bus.
287 If your test involves multiple processes communicating, your best bet
288 is to add a test in here.
290 "make check" runs all the deterministic test programs (i.e. not break-loader).
292 "make check-coverage" is available if you configure with --enable-gcov and
293 gives a complete report on test suite coverage. You can also run
294 "test/decode-gcov foo.c" on any source file to get annotated source,
295 after running make check with a gcov-enabled tree.
300 Please file them at http://bugzilla.freedesktop.org under component
301 dbus, and also post to the mailing list for discussion. The commit
304 - for fixes that don't affect API or protocol, they can be committed
305 if any one qualified reviewer other than patch author
308 - for fixes that do affect API or protocol, two people
309 in the reviewer group have to review and approve the commit, and
310 posting to the list is definitely mandatory
312 - if there's a live unresolved controversy about a change,
313 don't commit it while the argument is still raging.
315 - regardless of reviews, to commit a patch:
316 - make check must pass
317 - the test suite must be extended to cover the new code
318 as much as reasonably feasible (see Tests above)
319 - the patch has to follow the portability, security, and
321 - the patch should as much as reasonable do one thing,
322 not many unrelated changes
323 No reviewer should approve a patch without these attributes, and
324 failure on these points is grounds for reverting the patch.
326 The reviewer group that can approve patches:
328 Havoc Pennington <hp@pobox.net>
329 Michael Meeks <michael.meeks@novell.com>
330 Alexander Larsson <alexl@redhat.com>
331 Zack Rusin <zack@kde.org>
332 Joe Shaw <joe@assbarn.com>
333 Mikael Hallendal <micke@imendio.com>
334 Richard Hult <richard@imendio.com>
335 Owen Fraser-Green <owen@discobabe.net>
336 Olivier Andrieu <oliv__a@users.sourceforge.net>
337 Colin Walters <walters@verbum.org>
338 Thiago Macieira <thiago@kde.org>
339 John Palmieri <johnp@redhat.com>
340 Scott James Remnant <scott@netsplit.com>
341 Will Thompson <will.thompson@collabora.co.uk>
342 Simon McVittie <simon.mcvittie@collabora.co.uk>