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+
+			Contributing to Emacs
+
+Emacs is a collaborative project and we encourage contributions from
+anyone and everyone.  If you want to contribute in the way that will
+help us most, we recommend (1) fixing reported bugs and (2)
+implementing the feature ideas in etc/TODO.  However, if you think of
+new features to add, please suggest them too -- we might like your
+idea.  Porting to new platforms is also useful, when there is a new
+platform, but that is not common nowadays.
+
+For documentation on how to develop Emacs changes, refer to the Emacs
+Manual and the Emacs Lisp Reference Manual (both included in the Emacs
+distribution).  The web pages in http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs
+contain additional information.
+
+You may also want to submit your change so that can be considered for
+inclusion in a future version of Emacs (see below).
+
+If you don't feel up to hacking Emacs, there are many other ways to
+help.  You can answer questions on the mailing lists, write
+documentation, find and report bugs, contribute to the Emacs web
+pages, or develop a package that works with Emacs.
+
+Here are some style and legal conventions for contributors to Emacs:
+
+
+* Coding Standards
+
+Contributed code should follow the GNU Coding Standard.
+
+If it doesn't, we'll need to find someone to fix the code before we
+can use it.
+
+Emacs has certain additional style and coding conventions.
+
+Ref: http://www.gnu.org/prep/standards_toc.html
+Ref: GNU Coding Standards Info Manual
+Ref: The "Tips" Appendix in the Emacs Lisp Reference.
+
+
+* Copyright Assignment
+
+We can accept small changes without legal papers, and for medium-size
+changes a copyright disclaimer is ok too.  To accept substantial
+contributions from you, we need a copyright assignment form filled out
+and filed with the FSF.
+
+Contact us at emacs-devel@gnu.org to obtain the relevant forms.
+
+
+* Getting the Source Code
+
+The latest version of Emacs can be downloaded using CVS or Arch from
+the Savannah web site.  It is important to write your patch based on
+this version; if you start from an older version, your patch may be
+outdated when you write it, and maintainers will have hard time
+applying it.
+
+After you have downloaded the CVS source, you should read the file
+INSTALL.CVS for build instructions (they differ to some extent from a
+normal build).
+
+Ref: http://savannah.gnu.org/projects/emacs
+
+
+* Submitting Patches
+
+Every patch must have several pieces of information before we
+can properly evaluate it.
+
+When you have all these pieces, bundle them up in a mail message and
+send it to emacs-pretest-bug@gnu.org or emacs-devel@gnu.org.
+
+All subsequent discussion should also be sent to the mailing list.
+
+** Description
+
+For bug fixes, a description of the bug and how your patch fixes this
+bug.
+
+For new features, a description of the feature and your
+implementation.
+
+** ChangeLog
+
+A ChangeLog entry as plaintext (separate from the patch).
+
+See the various ChangeLog files for format and content. Note that,
+unlike some other projects, we do require ChangeLogs also for
+documentation, i.e. Texinfo files.
+
+Ref: "Change Log Concepts" node of the GNU Coding Standards Info
+Manual, for how to write good log entries.
+
+** The patch itself.
+
+Please use "Context Diff" format.
+
+If you are accessing the CVS repository use
+	cvs update; cvs diff -cp
+else, use
+	diff -cp OLD NEW
+
+If your version of diff does not support these options, then get the
+latest version of GNU Diff.
+
+** Mail format.
+
+We prefer to get the patches as inline plain text.
+
+Please be aware of line wrapping which will make the patch unreadable
+and useless for us.  To avoid that, you can use MIME attachments or,
+as a last resort, uuencoded gzipped text.
+
+** Please reread your patch before submitting it.
+
+** Do not mix changes.
+
+If you send several unrelated changes together, we will ask you to
+separate them so we can consider each of the changes by itself.
+
+
+* Coding style and conventions.
+
+** Mandatory reading:
+
+The "Tips and Conventions" Appendix of the Emacs Lisp Reference.
+
+** Avoid using `defadvice' or `eval-after-load' for Lisp code to be
+included in Emacs.
+
+** Remove all trailing whitespace in all source and text files.
+
+** Use ?\s instead of ?  in Lisp code for a space character.
+
+
+* Supplemental information for Emacs Developers.
+
+** Write access to Emacs' CVS repository.
+
+Once you become a frequent contributor to Emacs, we can consider
+giving you write access to the CVS repository.
+
+
+** Emacs Mailing lists.
+
+Discussion about Emacs development takes place on emacs-devel@gnu.org.
+
+Bug reports for released versions are sent to emacs-bugs@gnu.org.
+
+Bug reports for development versions are sent to emacs-pretest-bug@gnu.org.
+
+You can subscribe to the mailing lists at savannah.gnu.org/projects/emacs.
+
+You can find the mailing lists archives at mail.gnu.org or gmane.org.
+
+
+** Document your changes.
+
+Think carefully about whether your change requires updating the
+documentation.  If it does, you can either do this yourself or add an
+item to the NEWS file.
+
+If you document your change in NEWS, please mark the NEWS entry with
+the documentation status of the change: if you submit the changes for
+the manuals, mark it with "+++"; if it doesn't need to be documented,
+mark it with "---"; if it needs to be documented, but you didn't
+submit documentation changes, leave the NEWS entry unmarked.  (These
+marks are checked by the Emacs maintainers to make sure every change
+was reflected in the manuals.)
+
+
+** Understanding Emacs Internals.
+
+The best way to understand Emacs Internals is to read the code,
+but the nodes "Tips" and "GNU Emacs Internals" in the Appendix
+of the Emacs Lisp Reference Manual may also help.
+
+The file etc/DEBUG describes how to debug Emacs bugs.
+
+
+
+* How to Maintain Copyright Years for GNU Emacs
+
+** Our lawyer says it is ok if we add, to each file that has been in Emacs
+since Emacs 21 came out in 2001, all the subsequent years.  We don't
+need to check whether *that file* was changed in those years.
+It's sufficient that *Emacs* was changed in those years (and it was!).
+
+** For those files that have been added since then, we should add
+the year it was added to Emacs, and all subsequent years."
+
+** For the refcards under etc/, it's ok to simply use the latest year
+(typically in a `\def\year{YEAR}' expression) for the rendered copyright
+notice, while maintaining the full list of years in the copyright notice
+in the comments.
+
+
+Local variables:
+mode: outline
+paragraph-separate: "[ 	]*$"
+end:
+