Mailing list
===
-The D-BUS mailing list is message-bus-list@freedesktop.org; discussion
+The D-Bus mailing list is dbus@lists.freedesktop.org; discussion
of patches, etc. should go there.
Security
===
-Most of D-BUS is security sensitive. Guidelines related to that:
+Most of D-Bus is security sensitive. Guidelines related to that:
- avoid memcpy(), sprintf(), strlen(), snprintf, strlcat(),
strstr(), strtok(), or any of this stuff. Use DBusString.
data). Avoiding heuristics is also important for security reasons;
if it looks funny, ignore it (or exit, or disconnect).
-Making a release
+Development
===
-To make a release of D-BUS, do the following:
+D-Bus uses Git as its version control system. The main repository is
+hosted at git.freedesktop.org/dbus/dbus. To clone D-Bus, execute the
+following command:
+
+ git clone git://git.freedesktop.org/dbus/dbus
+OR
+ git clone git.freedesktop.org:dbus/dbus
+
+The latter form is the one that allows pushing, but it also requires
+an SSH account on the server. The former form allows anonymous
+checkouts.
+
+D-Bus development happens in two branches in parallel: the current
+stable branch, with an even minor number (like 1.0, 1.2 and 1.4), and
+the next development branch, with the next odd number.
+
+The stable branch is named after the version number itself (dbus-1.2,
+dbus-1.4), whereas the development branch is simply known as "master".
+
+When making a change to D-Bus, do the following:
+
+ - check out the earliest branch of D-Bus that makes sense to have
+ your change in. If it's a bugfix, it's normally the current stable
+ branch; if it's a feature, it's normally the "master" branch. If
+ you have an important security fix, you may want to apply to older
+ branches too.
+
+ - for large changes:
+ if you're developing a new, large feature, it's recommended
+ to create a new branch and do your development there. Publish
+ your branch at a suitable place and ask others to help you
+ develop and test it. Once your feature is considered finalised,
+ you may merge it into the "master" branch.
+
+- for small changes:
+ . make your change to the source code
+ . execute tests to guarantee that you're not introducing a
+ regression. For that, execute: make check
+ (if possible, add a new test to check the fix you're
+ introducing)
+ . commit your change using "git commit"
+ in the commit message, write a short sentence describing what
+ you did in the first line. Then write a longer description in
+ the next paragraph(s).
+ . repeat the previous steps if necessary to have multiple commits
+
+ - extract your patches and send to the D-Bus mailing list for
+ review or post them to the D-Bus Bugzilla, attaching them to a bug
+ report. To extract the patches, execute:
+ git format-patch origin/master
+
+ - once your code has been reviewed, you may push it to the Git
+ server:
+ git push origin my-branch:remote
+ OR
+ git push origin dbus-X.Y
+ OR
+ git push origin master
+ (consult the Git manual to know which command applies)
+
+ - (Optional) if you've not worked on "master", merge your changes to
+ that branch. If you've worked on an earlier branch than the current
+ stable, merge your changes upwards towards the stable branch, then
+ from there into "master".
+
+ . execute: git checkout master
+ . ensure that you have the latest "master" from the server, update
+ if you don't
+ . execute: git merge dbus-X.Y
+ . if you have any conflicts, resolve them, git add the conflicted
+ files and then git commit
+ . push the "master" branch to the server as well
+
+ Executing this merge is recommended, but not necessary for all
+ changes. You should do this step if your bugfix is critical for the
+ development in "master", or if you suspect that conflicts will arise
+ (you're usually the best person to resolve conflicts introduced by
+ your own code), or if it has been too long since the last merge.
+
+
+Making a release
+===
- - check out a fresh copy from CVS
+To make a release of D-Bus, do the following:
- - increment the version number in configure.in
+ - check out a fresh copy from Git
- verify that the libtool versioning/library soname is
changed if it needs to be, or not changed if not
- update the file NEWS based on the ChangeLog
+ - update the AUTHORS file based on the ChangeLog
+
- add a ChangeLog entry containing the version number
you're releasing ("Released 0.3" or something)
so people can see which changes were before and after
- a given release.
+ a given release
+
+ - the version number should have major.minor.micro even
+ if micro is 0, i.e. "1.0.0" and "1.2.0" not "1.0"/"1.2"
- "make distcheck" (DO NOT just "make dist" - pass the check!)
- if make distcheck fails, fix it.
- - once distcheck succeeds, "cvs commit"
+ - once distcheck succeeds, "git commit -a". This is the version
+ of the tree that corresponds exactly to the released tarball.
+
+ - tag the tree with "git tag -s -m 'Released X.Y.Z' dbus-X.Y.Z"
+ where X.Y.Z is the version of the release. If you can't sign
+ then simply created an unsigned annotated tag:
+ "git tag -a -m 'Released X.Y.Z' dbus-X.Y.Z".
+
+ - bump the version number up in configure.in, and commit
+ it. Make sure you do this *after* tagging the previous
+ release! The idea is that git has a newer version number
+ than anything released.
+
+ - merge the branch you've released to the chronologically-later
+ branch (usually "master"). You'll probably have to fix a merge
+ conflict in configure.in (the version number).
- - if someone else made changes and the commit fails,
- you have to "cvs up" and run "make distcheck" again
+ - push your changes and the tag to the central repository with
+ git push origin master dbus-X.Y dbus-X.Y.Z
- - once the commit succeeds, "cvs tag DBUS_X_Y_Z" where
- X_Y_Z map to version X.Y.Z
+ - scp your tarball to freedesktop.org server and copy it to
+ dbus.freedesktop.org:/srv/dbus.freedesktop.org/www/releases/dbus/dbus-X.Y.Z.tar.gz.
+ This should be possible if you're in group "dbus"
- - scp your tarball to freedesktop.org server and copy it
- to /home/www/twiki/Software/dbus/releases. This should
- be possible if you're in group "dbus"
+ - Update the online documentation with `make -C doc maintainer-upload-docs`.
- - update the wiki page http://pdx.freedesktop.org/Software/dbus by
+ - update the wiki page http://www.freedesktop.org/Software/dbus by
adding the new release under the Download heading. Then, cut the
link and changelog for the previous that was there.
- update the wiki page
- http://pdx.freedesktop.org/Software/DbusReleaseArchive pasting the
+ http://www.freedesktop.org/Software/DbusReleaseArchive pasting the
previous release. Note that bullet points for each of the changelog
items must be indented three more spaces to conform to the
formatting of the other releases there.
- - post to dbus@freedesktop.org announcing the release.
+ - post to dbus@lists.freedesktop.org announcing the release.
+After making a ".0" stable release
+===
+
+After releasing, when you increment the version number in git, also
+move the ChangeLog to ChangeLog.pre-X-Y where X-Y is what you just
+released, e.g. ChangeLog.pre-1-0. Then create and cvs add a new empty
+ChangeLog. The last entry in ChangeLog.pre-1-0 should be the one about
+"Released 1.0".
+
+Add ChangeLog.pre-X-Y to EXTRA_DIST in Makefile.am.
+
+We create a branch for each stable release; sometimes the branch is
+not done immediately, instead it's possible to wait until someone has
+a not-suitable-for-stable change they want to make and then branch to
+allow committing that change.
+
+The branch name should be dbus-X.Y-branch which is a branch that has
+releases versioned X.Y.Z
+
+To branch:
+ git branch dbus-X.Y-branch
+and upload the branch tag to the server:
+ git-push origin dbus-X.Y-branch
+
+To develop in this branch:
+ git-checkout dbus-X.Y-branch
+
Environment variables
===
-These are the environment variables that are used by the D-BUS client library
+These are the environment variables that are used by the D-Bus client library
DBUS_VERBOSE=1
-Turns on printing verbose messages. This only works if D-BUS has been
+Turns on printing verbose messages. This only works if D-Bus has been
compiled with --enable-verbose-mode
DBUS_MALLOC_FAIL_NTH=n
Can be set to a number, causing every nth call to dbus_alloc or
-dbus_realloc to fail. This only works if D-BUS has been compiled with
+dbus_realloc to fail. This only works if D-Bus has been compiled with
--enable-tests.
DBUS_MALLOC_FAIL_GREATER_THAN=n
Can be set to a number, causing every call to dbus_alloc or
dbus_realloc to fail if the number of bytes to be allocated is greater
-than the specified number. This only works if D-BUS has been compiled with
+than the specified number. This only works if D-Bus has been compiled with
--enable-tests.
+DBUS_TEST_MALLOC_FAILURES=n
+Many of the D-Bus tests will run over and over, once for each malloc
+involved in the test. Each run will fail a different malloc, plus some
+number of mallocs following that malloc (because a fair number of bugs
+only happen if two or more mallocs fail in a row, e.g. error recovery
+that itself involves malloc). This env variable sets the number of
+mallocs to fail.
+Here's why you care: If set to 0, then the malloc checking is skipped,
+which makes the test suite a heck of a lot faster. Just run with this
+env variable unset before you commit.
+
Tests
===
--enable-tests.
dbus/dbus-test
-This is the main unit test program that tests all aspects of the D-BUS
+This is the main unit test program that tests all aspects of the D-Bus
client library.
dbus/bus-test
A test that tries to break the message loader by passing it randomly
created invalid messages.
+test/name-test/*
+This is a suite of programs which are run with a temporary session bus.
+If your test involves multiple processes communicating, your best bet
+is to add a test in here.
+
"make check" runs all the deterministic test programs (i.e. not break-loader).
"make check-coverage" is available if you configure with --enable-gcov and
- regardless of reviews, to commit a patch:
- make check must pass
- the test suite must be extended to cover the new code
- as much as reasonably feasible
+ as much as reasonably feasible (see Tests above)
- the patch has to follow the portability, security, and
style guidelines
- the patch should as much as reasonable do one thing,
No reviewer should approve a patch without these attributes, and
failure on these points is grounds for reverting the patch.
-The reviewer group that can approve patches: Havoc Pennington, Michael
-Meeks, Alex Larsson, Zack Rusin, Joe Shaw, Mikael Hallendal, Richard
-Hult, Owen Fraser-Green, Olivier Andrieu.
+The reviewer group that can approve patches:
+
+Havoc Pennington <hp@pobox.net>
+Michael Meeks <michael.meeks@novell.com>
+Alexander Larsson <alexl@redhat.com>
+Zack Rusin <zack@kde.org>
+Joe Shaw <joe@assbarn.com>
+Mikael Hallendal <micke@imendio.com>
+Richard Hult <richard@imendio.com>
+Owen Fraser-Green <owen@discobabe.net>
+Olivier Andrieu <oliv__a@users.sourceforge.net>
+Colin Walters <walters@verbum.org>
+Thiago Macieira <thiago@kde.org>
+John Palmieri <johnp@redhat.com>
+Scott James Remnant <scott@netsplit.com>
+Will Thompson <will.thompson@collabora.co.uk>
+Simon McVittie <simon.mcvittie@collabora.co.uk>