3 @setfilename gnus-coding
4 @settitle Gnus Coding Style and Maintainance Guide
10 Copyright (c) 2004, 2005 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
13 Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document
14 under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.1 or
15 any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no
16 Invariant Sections, with the Front-Cover texts being ``A GNU
17 Manual'', and with the Back-Cover Texts as in (a) below. A copy of the
18 license is included in the section entitled ``GNU Free Documentation
19 License'' in the Emacs manual.
21 (a) The FSF's Back-Cover Text is: ``You have freedom to copy and modify
22 this GNU Manual, like GNU software. Copies published by the Free
23 Software Foundation raise funds for GNU development.''
25 This document is part of a collection distributed under the GNU Free
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28 license to the document, as described in section 6 of the license.
34 @title Gnus Coding Style and Maintainance Guide
36 @author by Reiner Steib <Reiner.Steib@@gmx.de>
41 @c Obviously this is only a very rudimentary draft. We put it in CVS
42 @c anyway hoping that it might annoy someone enough to fix it. ;-)
43 @c Fixing only a paragraph also is appreciated.
46 @top Gnus Coding Style and Maintainance Guide
47 This manual describes @dots{}
49 * Gnus Coding Style:: Gnus Coding Style
50 * Gnus Maintainance Guide:: Gnus Maintainance Guide
53 @node Gnus Coding Style
54 @chapter Gnus Coding Style
57 The Gnus distribution contains a lot of libraries that have been written
58 for Gnus and used intensively for Gnus. But many of those libraries are
59 useful on their own. E.g. other Emacs Lisp packages might use the
60 @acronym{MIME} library @xref{Top, ,Top, emacs-mime, The Emacs MIME
63 @subsection General purpose libraries
68 @file{.netrc} parsing functionality.
69 @c As of 2005-10-21...
70 There are no Gnus dependencies in this file.
73 Functions for formatting arbitrary formatting strings.
74 @c As of 2005-10-21...
75 There are no Gnus dependencies in this file.
79 @subsection Encryption and security
83 File encryption routines
84 @c As of 2005-10-25...
85 There are no Gnus dependencies in this file.
88 Read passwords from user, possibly using a password cache.
89 @c As of 2005-10-21...
90 There are no Gnus dependencies in this file.
93 TLS/SSL support via wrapper around GnuTLS
94 @c As of 2005-10-21...
95 There are no Gnus dependencies in this file.
98 Glue for the various PGP implementations.
99 @c As of 2005-10-21...
100 There are no Gnus dependencies in these files.
104 @subsection Networking
108 Domain Name System dig interface.
109 @c As of 2005-10-21...
110 There are no serious Gnus dependencies in this file. Uses
111 @code{gnus-run-mode-hooks} (a wrapper function).
114 Domain Name Service lookups.
115 @c As of 2005-10-21...
116 There are no Gnus dependencies in these files.
119 @subsection Mail and News related RFCs
123 Post Office Protocol (RFC 1460) interface.
124 @c As of 2005-10-21...
125 There are no Gnus dependencies in this file.
128 @acronym{IMAP} library.
129 @c As of 2005-10-21...
130 There are no Gnus dependencies in this file.
133 Functions for parsing RFC822bis headers.
134 @c As of 2005-10-21...
135 There are no Gnus dependencies in this file.
138 HZ (rfc1843) decoding. HZ is a data format for exchanging files of
139 arbitrarily mixed Chinese and @acronym{ASCII} characters.
140 @c As of 2005-10-21...
141 @code{rfc1843-gnus-setup} seem to be useful only for Gnus. Maybe this
142 function should be relocated to remove dependencies on Gnus. Other
143 minor dependencies: @code{gnus-newsgroup-name} could be eliminated by
144 using an optional argument to @code{rfc1843-decode-article-body}.
147 Functions for decoding rfc2045 headers
150 Functions for encoding and decoding rfc2047 messages
153 RFC2104 Hashed Message Authentication Codes
156 Functions for decoding rfc2231 headers
159 Interpret RFC2646 "flowed" text
160 @c As of 2005-10-27...
161 There are no Gnus dependencies in this file.
166 All message composition from Gnus (both mail and news) takes place in
167 Message mode buffers. Message mode is intended to be a replacement for
168 Emacs mail mode. There should be no Gnus dependencies in
171 @subsection Gnus backends
173 The files @file{nn*.el} provide functionality for accessing NNTP
174 (@file{nntp.el}), IMAP (@file{nnimap.el}) and several other Mail back
175 ends (probably @file{nnml.el}, @file{nnfolder.el} and
176 @file{nnmaildir.el} are the ones most widely used mail back ends).
188 @c tla netrc pop3 dig dns ...
192 @section Compatibility
194 @c Compatibility with XEmacs and older Emacs versions in v5-10 and in the
201 @node Gnus Maintainance Guide
202 @chapter Gnus Maintainance Guide
204 @section Stable and development versions
206 The CVS trunk is developed quite actively.
208 @c Most of the time Gnus is developed on the trunk.
210 @c Exeption: several month of feature freeze after a release,
216 @c Some MIDs related to this follow. Use http://thread.gmane.org/MID
217 @c (and click on the subject) to get the thread on Gmane.
219 @c Some quotes from Miles Bader follow...
221 @c <v9eklyke6b.fsf@marauder.physik.uni-ulm.de>
222 @c <buovfd71nkk.fsf@mctpc71.ucom.lsi.nec.co.jp>
224 I do Emacs->Gnus less often (than Gnus->Emacs) because it tends to
225 require more manual work.
227 By default I sync about once a week. I also try to follow any Gnus
228 threads on the mailing lists and make sure any changes being discussed
229 are kept more up-to-date (so say 1-2 days delay for "topical" changes).
232 @c <buovfd71nkk.fsf@mctpc71.ucom.lsi.nec.co.jp>
234 BTW, just to add even more verbose explanation about the syncing thing:
236 Basically my idea is that the Emacs-Gnus gateway will cause all common
237 files in Emacs and Gnus v5-10 to be identical except when there's a very
238 good reason (e.g., the Gnus version string in Emacs says "5.11", but the
239 v5-10 version string remains "5.10.whatever"). Furthermore, all changes
240 in these files in either Emacs or the v5-10 branch will be installed
241 into the Gnus CVS trunk, again except where there's a good reason
242 (typically so far the only exception has been that the changes already
243 exist in the trunk in modified form). Because of this, when the next
244 Emacs Gnus upgrade comes, it should be very easy -- just plonk in the
245 files from the Gnus trunk without worrying about lost changes from the
248 The effect of this is that as hacker, you should generally only have to
249 make changes in one place:
251 1) If it's a file which is thought of as being outside of Gnus (e.g.,
252 the new "encrypt.el"), you should probably make the change in the
253 Emacs tree, and it will show up in the Gnus tree a few days later.
255 If you don't have Emacs CVS access (or it's inconvenient), you can
256 change such a file in the v5-10 branch, and it should propagate to
257 Emacs CVS -- however, it will get some extra scrutiny (by me) to see
258 if the changes are possibly controversial and need discussion on the
259 mailing list. [Many changes are obvious bug-fixes however, so often
260 there won't be any problem.]
262 2) If it's to a Gnus file, and it's important enough that it should be
263 part of Emacs/v5-10, then you can make the change on the v5-10
264 branch, and it will go into Emacs CVS and the Gnus CVS trunk (a few
267 If you know that there will be conflicts (perhaps because the
268 affected source code is different in v5-10 and the Gnus CVS trunk),
269 then you can install your change in both places, and when I try to
270 sync them, there will be a conflict -- however, since in most such
271 cases there would be a conflict _anyway_, it's often easier for me
272 to resolve it simply if I see two "identical" changes, and can just
273 choose the proper one, rather than having to actually fix the code.
275 3) For general Gnus development changes, of course you just make the
276 change on the Gnus CVS trunk and it goes into Emacs a few years
279 Of course in any case, if you just can't wait for me to sync your
280 change, you can commit it in more than one place and probably there will
281 be no problem; usually the changes are textually identical anyway, so
282 can be easily resolved automatically (sometimes I notice silly things in
283 such multiple commits, like whitespace differences, and unify those ;-).
288 @heading @file{GNUS-NEWS}
290 Starting from No Gnus, the @file{GNUS-NEWS} is created from
291 @file{texi/gnus-news.texi}. Don't edit @file{GNUS-NEWS}. Edit
292 @file{texi/gnus-news.texi}, type @command{make GNUS-NEWS} in the
293 @file{texi} directory and commit @file{GNUS-NEWS} and
294 @file{texi/gnus-news.texi}.
299 @c coding: iso-8859-1
303 arch-tag: ab15234c-2c8a-4cbd-8111-1811bcc6f931