Guile

Project GNU's extension language

(Developing and Contributing)


About Guile
What is Guile?
Recent news
Mailing lists

Documentation
Manuals
FAQ's

Download
Getting Guile
Snapshots
Repository

Projects
Core
GUI
File Formats
Networking
Tools
Applications

Development
Project Summary
Helping out
Cool ideas

Resources
Guile Resources
Scheme Resources

Developing

Reporting bugs

Developing the core of guile

Guile is actively being developed even as you read this. The maintainers and users always appreciate contributions. The guile maintainers are those people who, like you, found out about guile and have decided that it is useful enough to them to do even more work.

If you feel the same, please join the guile mailing list and begin to contribute. There is nothing and stopping you from joining the team.

Reporting Bugs

You do us a much-appreciated service when you report the bugs you find in Guile. Please don't assume we already know about them.

To report a bug, send mail to <bug-guile@gnu.org>.

When you report a bug, please try to provide exact directions we can follow to make the bug show itself when we test on our systems. If we can reproduce the bug, it's almost certain we will be able to fix it.

If you have fixed the bug as well we ask that you:

  • Please send either a context diff or a unified diff (diff -c or -u); diff's default output format is difficult to use, and is not helpful.
  • Please include a ChangeLog entry with your fix, so we don't have to guess why you did what you did. A guide to writing good ChangeLog entries can be found on the ChangeLog page.
  • Don't neglect to include the bug report! If we just get a patch, and can't figure out what it's supposed to accomplish, we may not apply it.
  • If the patch changes more than about ten lines of code, then you have a copyright on it, whether you want one or not. In order for us to use your fix, we need you to assign your copyright interest to the FSF. We agree this is annoying and bureacratic, but it's critical if we want to be able to defend Guile's license in court. Whoever handles your patch will get in touch with you about this. You can read about Copyright Papers in the GNU Maintainer Guide.