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