C<$1> in the pattern is always an even number for maintenance
versions, and odd for developer releases.
-In the past it has been observed that pumkings tend to invent new
+In the past it has been observed that pumpkings tend to invent new
naming conventions on the fly. If you are a pumpking, before you
invent a new name for any of the three types of perl distributions,
please inform the guys from the CPAN who are doing indexing and
If feasible, try to keep filenames 8.3-compliant to humor those poor
souls that get joy from running Perl under such dire limitations.
There's a script, check83.pl, for keeping your nose 8.3-clean.
+In a similar vein, do not create files or directories which differ only
+in case (upper versus lower).
=head2 Seek consensus on major changes
keywords.pl
myconfig
opcode.pl
- perly.fixer
t/TEST
t/*/*.t
*.SH
patch with a promise to quickly issue a follow-up that handles those
directories.
-=head2 make run_byacc
+=head2 make regen_perly
-If you have byacc-1.8.2 (available from CPAN), and if there have been
-changes to F<perly.y>, you can regenerate the F<perly.c> file. The
-run_byacc makefile target does this by running byacc and then applying
-some patches so that byacc dynamically allocates space, rather than
-having fixed limits. This patch is handled by the F<perly.fixer>
-script. Depending on the nature of the changes to F<perly.y>, you may
-or may not have to hand-edit the patch to apply correctly. If you do,
-you should include the edited patch in the new distribution. If you
-have byacc-1.9, the patch won't apply cleanly. Changes to the printf
-output statements mean the patch won't apply cleanly. Long ago I
-started to fix F<perly.fixer> to detect this, but I never completed the
-task.
+If perly.y has been edited, it is nessary to run this target to rebuild
+perly.h, perly.act and perly.tab. In fact this target just runs the Perl
+script regen_perly.pl. Note that perly.c is I<not> rebuilt; this is just a
+plain static file now.
-If C<perly.c> or C<perly.h> changes, make sure you run C<perl vms/vms_yfix.pl>
-to update the corresponding VMS files. This could be taken care of by
-the regen_all target in the Unix Makefile. See also
-L<VMS-specific updates>.
+This target relies on you having Bison installed on your system. Running
+the target will tell you if you haven't got the right version, and if so,
+where to get the right one. Or if you prefer, you could hack
+regen_perly.pl to work with your version of Bison. The important things
+are that the regexes can still extract out the right chunks of the Bison
+output into perly.act and perly.tab, and that the contents of those two
+files, plus perly.h, are functionally equivalent to those produced by the
+supported version of Bison.
-Some additional notes from Larry on this:
-
-Don't forget to regenerate perly_c.diff.
-
- byacc -d perly.y
- mv y.tab.c perly.c
- patch perly.c <perly_c.diff
- # manually apply any failed hunks
- diff -c perly.c.orig perly.c >perly_c.diff
-
-One chunk of lines that often fails begins with
-
- #line 29 "perly.y"
-
-and ends one line before
-
- #define YYERRCODE 256
-
-This only happens when you add or remove a token type. I suppose this
-could be automated, but it doesn't happen very often nowadays.
-
-Larry
+Note that in the old days, you had to do C<make run_byacc> instead.
=head2 make regen_all
-This target takes care of the PERLYVMS, regen_headers, and regen_pods
-targets.
+This target takes care of the regen_headers, and regen_pods targets.
=head2 make regen_headers
backwards-compatibility stubs. There's a lot of XS code out there.
Let's not force people to keep changing it.
+=head2 PPPort
+
+F<ext/Devel/PPPort/PPPort.pm> needs to be synchronized to include all
+new macros added to .h files (normally perl.h and XSUB.h, but others
+as well). Since chances are that when a new macro is added the
+committer will forget to update F<PPPort.pm>, it's the best to diff for
+changes in .h files when making a new release and making sure that
+F<PPPort.pm> contains them all.
+
+The pumpking can delegate the synchronization responsibility to anybody
+else, but the release process is the only place where we can make sure
+that no new macros fell through the cracks.
+
=head2 Changes
Be sure to update the F<Changes> file. Try to include both an overall
=head2 Todo
-The F<Todo> file contains a roughly-catgorized unordered list of
-aspects of Perl that could use enhancement, features that could be
-added, areas that could be cleaned up, and so on. During your term as
-pumpkin-holder, you will probably address some of these issues, and
-perhaps identify others which, while you decide not to address them
-this time around, may be tackled in the future. Update the file
-reflect the situation as it stands when you hand over the pumpkin.
+The F<pod/perltodo.pod> file contains a roughly-categorized unordered
+list of aspects of Perl that could use enhancement, features that could
+be added, areas that could be cleaned up, and so on. During your term
+as pumpkin-holder, you will probably address some of these issues, and
+perhaps identify others which, while you decide not to address them this
+time around, may be tackled in the future. Update the file to reflect
+the situation as it stands when you hand over the pumpkin.
You might like, early in your pumpkin-holding career, to see if you
can find champions for partiticular issues on the to-do list: an issue
owned is an issue more likely to be resolved.
-There are also some more porting-specific L<Todo> items later in this
+There are also some more porting-specific L</Todo> items later in this
file.
=head2 OS/2-specific updates
=head2 VMS-specific updates
-If you have changed F<perly.y> or F<perly.c>, then you most probably want
-to update F<vms/perly_{h,c}.vms> by running C<perl vms/vms_yfix.pl>, or
-by running `make regen_all` which will run that script for you.
-
The Perl revision number appears as "perl5" in configure.com.
It is courteous to update that if necessary.
=item CHECK_FORMAT
-To test the correct use of printf-style arguments, C<Configure> with
-S<-Dccflags='-DCHECK_FORMAT -Wformat'> and run C<make>. The compiler
-will produce warning of incorrect use of format arguments. CHECK_FORMAT
-changes perl-defined formats to common formats, so DO NOT USE the executable
-produced by this process.
+If you have gcc, you can test the correct use of printf-style
+arguments. Run C<Configure> with S<-Dccflags='-DCHECK_FORMAT
+-Wformat'> (and S<-Dcc=gcc>, if you are not on a system where C<cc>
+is C<gcc>) and run C<make>. The compiler will produce warnings of
+incorrect use of format arguments. CHECK_FORMAT changes perl-defined
+formats to common formats, so DO NOT USE the executable produced by
+this process.
A more accurate approach is the following commands:
casual users crazy. Even experienced users will get confused :-). Upon
reflection, I'd say leave libperl.so in $archlib.
-=item 4.
+=back
+
+=head2 Indentation style
-Indentation style: over the years Perl has become a mishmash of
+Over the years Perl has become a mishmash of
various indentation styles, but the original "Larry style" can
probably be restored with (GNU) indent somewhat like this:
places like sv.c:Perl_sv_upgrade() or sv.c:Perl_clone_using().
Similarly nicely aligned &&s, ||s and ==s would not be respected.
-=back
-
=head1 Upload Your Work to CPAN
You can upload your work to CPAN if you have a CPAN id. Check out
=back
+=head2 Copyright Issues
+
+The following is based on the consensus of a couple of IPR lawyers,
+but it is of course not a legally binding statement, just a common
+sense summary.
+
+=over 4
+
+=item *
+
+Tacking on copyright statements is unnecessary to begin with because
+of the Berne convention. But assuming you want to go ahead...
+
+=item *
+
+The right form of a copyright statement is
+
+ Copyright (C) Year, Year, ... by Someone
+
+The (C) is not required everywhere but it doesn't hurt and in certain
+jurisdictions it is required, so let's leave it in. (Yes, it's true
+that in some jurisdictions the "(C)" is not legally binding, one should
+use the true ringed-C. But we don't have that character available for
+Perl's source code.)
+
+The years must be listed out separately. Year-Year is not correct.
+Only the years when the piece has changed 'significantly' may be added.
+
+=item *
+
+One cannot give away one's copyright trivially. One can give one's
+copyright away by using public domain, but even that requires a little
+bit more than just saying 'this is in public domain'. (What it
+exactly requires depends on your jurisdiction.) But barring public
+domain, one cannot "transfer" one's copyright to another person or
+entity. In the context of software, it means that contributors cannot
+give away their copyright or "transfer" it to the "owner" of the software.
+
+Also remember that in many cases if you are employed by someone,
+your work may be copyrighted to your employer, even when you are
+contributing on your own time (this all depends on too many things
+to list here). But the bottom line is that you definitely can't give
+away a copyright you may not even have.
+
+What is possible, however, is that the software can simply state
+
+ Copyright (C) Year, Year, ... by Someone and others
+
+and then list the "others" somewhere in the distribution.
+And this is exactly what Perl does. (The "somewhere" is
+AUTHORS and the Changes* files.)
+
+=item *
+
+Split files, merged files, and generated files are problematic.
+The rule of thumb: in split files, copy the copyright years of
+the original file to all the new files; in merged files make
+an union of the copyright years of all the old files; in generated
+files propagate the copyright years of the generating file(s).
+
+=item *
+
+The files of Perl source code distribution do carry a lot of
+copyrights, by various people. (There are many copyrights embedded in
+perl.c, for example.) The most straightforward thing for pumpkings to
+do is to simply update Larry's copyrights at the beginning of the
+*.[hcy], x2p/*.[hcy], *.pl, and README files, and leave all other
+copyrights alone. Doing more than that requires quite a bit of tracking.
+
+=back
+
=head1 AUTHORS
-Original author: Andy Dougherty doughera@lafcol.lafayette.edu .
+Original author: Andy Dougherty doughera@lafayette.edu .
Additions by Chip Salzenberg chip@perl.com and
Tim Bunce Tim.Bunce@ig.co.uk .
https://perl5.git.perl.org / perl5.git / blobdiff