
$Id: README.Contributing,v 1.20 2010/01/31 20:09:44 we7u Exp $


Hello possible new developer, and welcome to the Xastir project!

In order to get contributed patches accepted more easily by the
Xastir developers:

*) Read "Developer Guidelines and Notes" in the "HowTos" section of
Xastir's Wiki (http://www.xastir.org).  Make sure to follow the
formatting and indentation rules, and in particular the tab format
(spaces, not tabs).  If you don't like some of the formatting rules,
abide by them anyway for consistency (Hey, I don't like some of them
either, but consistency is more important than ideas I might have of
coding style!  --we7u).

*) Check the Xastir pages at Sourceforge.  There are sections for bug
reports and feature requests.  Anyone can log new bugs or feature requests,
whether or not they are logged into Sourceforge.  This is one of the best
places to see what needs to be worked on, and to see if anyone else has
had a similar idea. 

*) Check with the Xastir-Dev list first to see if anyone else is
working on that particular idea or section of code.

*) Verify on the Xastir-Dev list that your idea has some merit and
chance of being accepted before you put your valuable time into the
patch.

*) Make sure you're willing to abide by the GPL license with respect
to your patch.

*) Use as generic C as possible, and comment what you've done, in
English please!

*) Keep in mind that Xastir runs on multiple operating systems, so
code for that.  Some #ifdef's may be required in order to make it
work for the various operating systems.

*) Xastir can be run in multiple languages, so code for that.  If
any user text is added, make sure to add language strings for them
to the language files.  If you don't know a particular language, add
it to all of the language files in English.  It will be translated
by others later.

*) Put your patches into either "context diff" or "unified diff"
format.  Don't submit complete files.  Make sure your diff is
against the latest CVS sources, as that is the version that the
developers work from.  Create the diff file against the directories
recursively if more than one file has been changed:

    diff -ur xastir-1.7.0 xastir-modified-directory > mypatch

Here's a shorthand method if you're doing all this against the CVS
version.  Do this from the top-level Xastir directory:

    cvs diff -u > mypatch

*) By compressing the patch and attaching it to an e-mail you
preserve the lines exactly so that the "patch" program will have no
trouble with it:

    gzip mypatch

This creates mypatch.gz, which you can attach to an e-mail or put up
on an ftp or http site for download.

*) Contribute patches either directly to one of the active
developers or to the Xastir-Dev mailing list (you must be subscribed
in order to post messages there).

*) To apply a patch I typically do this:

    gzip -d mypatch.gz

Check the path listed inside the patch:

    head mypatch

Based on the paths listed inside the patch and the directory at
which you're currently sitting, adjust the "p" number below so that
the proper number of directories are stripped from the patch.  This
example strips off the first two directories:

    patch -p2 <mypatch



DEBUGGING HINTS:
----------------
Xastir is a multi-threaded and multi-process application.  It uses
both threads and forks to do it's work.  You must have a debugger
that is capable of following these kinds of twists and turns in a
program.  Many older versions cannot.

Notes from Tom Russo:
---------------------
According to everything I can find about GDB, debugging of
multithreaded apps has been supported in gdb for some time, and are
certainly supported in gdb 6.x.  For the last couple days I've been
running xastir inside gdb instead of at the command prompt ---
perhaps I won't keep forgetting to start it with -t now, and when it
crashes I'll be where I need to be.

Jim --- this is possibly an option for you, too, if you're seeing
segfaults frequently enough and can't solve the core file question.
Try this:

  gdb /usr/local/bin/xastir
  > run -t

When it crashes, it'll pop you right out into the debugger, whether
a core file was created or not.  You could then view the active
threads:
  > info threads

and get a stack trace of where the crash happened:
  > where

You could also probably list the code near where the crash happened:
  > list

If you send the output of those three commands to the xastir-dev
list then it might help us narrow down the causes.


Notes from Curt:
----------------
Note that the meaning of the "-t" command-line flag has been
reversed.  "xastir -?" should show the change once you compile it.
This means that we'll do core dumps by default upon segfault instead
of using the internal Xastir segfault handler.  We've also
re-enabled the "-g" compile option for GCC so that debugging
information will remain embedded in the executable (unless you strip
it).  This should aid the development team to debug problems.

> Also, I cannot find anything in man bash that talks about core
> dumps nor segmentation faults.

Seems like some stuff we're just supposed to know.  _How_ we're
supposed to know I don't know either...  ;-)

Perhaps that last bit about SUID/SGID might be a clue:  There are
often exceptions to the rules for SUID/SGID programs.  Try _not_
setting Xastir SUID (if you're not using AX.25 kernel networking
ports that is) to see if you get a core file.  Can you send a
SIGSEGV to the running process and make it dump?  I just tried this
and I'm not getting a core file either.

Ah, I see in the "man bash" page:

  ulimit
        -a  All current limits are reported

This gives me:

  core file size        (blocks, -c) 0
  data seg size         (kbytes, -d) unlimited
  file size             (blocks, -f) unlimited
  max locked memory     (kbytes, -l) 32
  max memory size       (kbytes, -m) unlimited
  open files                    (-n) 1024
  pipe size          (512 bytes, -p) 8
  stack size            (kbytes, -s) unlimited
  cpu time             (seconds, -t) unlimited
  max user processes            (-u) 6139
  virtual memory        (kbytes, -v) unlimited

So...  Looks like I need to set "ulimit -c" and try again:

  ulimit -c unlimited

Now when I do "kill -11 <pid>" I get this:

  [1]+  Segmentation fault      (core dumped) xastir

and this:

  -rw-------   1 archer users 12320768 2006-02-02 09:31 core.7586

I just added "ulimit -c unlimited" to my .profile.  For what it's
worth, if Xastir has SUID permission bit set (4755) I don't get a
core dump, but if it is reset I do (0755).

I can invoke ddd like this (it uses gdb under the hood):

    ddd /usr/local/bin/xastir core.7586 &

or gdb like this:

    gdb -c core.7586 /usr/local/bin/xastir

Once you have the program and core file loaded into the debugger you
can display a backtrace to see where the program died.  In the case
of ddd, it's Status->Backtrace, then you click on one of the entries
to make the source code window display the exact location.

Another good debugger to try is "UPS".

Another note about core files:  Sometimes they get written where you
don't expect.  I just had one appear in ~/.xastir/tmp, so if you
think you should have a core file and can't find it, try:

    find . -type f | grep core

The core file may be written to a directory that Xastir is currently
in, instead of where you started Xastir from.

Customized debugging builds
---------------------------

Sometimes it is helpful to build xastir with specialized compiler
options to aid in debugging.  For example, if you're trying to hunt
down elusive segfaults, and you're using GCC, it might be wise to
build with "-O -g -fno-inline" to prevent the compiler from optimizing
quite so vigorously; aggressive optimization can sometimes lead to the
debugger saying the code died on one line when in fact it's happening
somewhere else.

To build with custom CFLAGS like this, just tell configure what you
want CFLAGS to be:
 ./configure CFLAGS="-O -g -fno-inline"

Naturally, unless you're using build directories separate from the
source directory (see below under "Segregating specialized builds"),
you need to build every file after changing configure like this, so do
a make clean before building:

  make clean
  make 
  make install

Remember not to "make install-strip" when trying to do debugging
builds, or your core files will not have debugging symbols in them and
it will be harder to get useful information out of the debugger.

Segregating specialized builds
------------------------------

The automake/autoconf setup of xastir makes it easy to maintain several
different builds of the code without having to clean out the directory and
rebuild every time.  One does this with "build directories" and executable
suffixes.

To use this capability, make sure you're starting with a completely
clean source directory.  In the directory where you normally do your
"cvs update", do a make distclean.  This will remove anything that
configure created as well as anything that make created.  From this
point forward, you don't build xastir in the source code directory
anymore.

Make an empty directory somewhere --- this will be your build directory.  
I put my build directories in parallel with the source code directory.  So
my tree looks like this:

   XASTIR-DEV
    |
    +----/xastir (source directory)
    |
    +---/build-normal
    |
    +---/build-debug
and so on.

So I would do:
  cd XASTIR-DEV
  mkdir build-normal

In the build directory, you run configure using the path to the configure 
script:

  cd build-normal
  ../xastir/configure
  make
  make install

The configure script uses the path that you gave when you ran it to figure 
out where to find the source code.

The beauty of this is you can make a second build without doing a make clean:
  cd XASTIR-DEV
  mkdir build-debug
  cd build-debug
  ../xastir/configure --program-suffix="-debug" CFLAGS="-O -g -fno-inline"
  make && sudo  make install

This will build a second binary called "xastir-debug" and install it,
but because you've done the buil in a separate directory, your normal
compile is untouched.

  cd ~/XASTIR-DEV/xastir
  cvs update
  cd ../build-normal
  make && sudo make install
  cd ../build-debug
  make && sudo make install

will update both of your builds.

I also use this technique to share a single xastir source tree over
NFS, building the code for multiple operating systems in separate
build directories. 
  (log in to CYGWIN machine, mount NFS directory)
  cd /mounted/directory/XASTIR-DEV
  mkdir build-cygnus
  ../xastir/configure
  make && make install

It can also be used to maintain specialized configurations, for
example a build with "rtree" disabled, a build with map caching
disabled, etc.  This is a good development trick to keep yourself
honest --- make sure you can still build all your custom builds when
you've done a large hacking run, and want to check if you have broken
things inside ifdefs.  Doing that without build directories requires a
huge number of configure/make/make distclean cycles.

More?
-----
Anything else?  Let's hear about what's still confusing or needs to
be expanded in this document.  Thanks!


APRS(tm) is a Trademark of Bob Bruninga

Copyright (C) 2006-2010 The Xastir Group

