3 #+title: Maintainer tasks
6 This document describes the tasks the Org-mode maintainer has to do
7 and how they are performed.
9 * Working with patchwork
11 John Wiegley is running a patchwork server that looks at the
12 emacs-orgmode mailing list and extracts patches. The maintainer and
13 his helpers should work through such patches, give feedback on them
14 and apply the ones which are good and done.
16 I have found that the best workflow for this is using the pw script by
17 Nate Case, with the modifications for Org-mode made by John Wiegley
18 and Carsten Dominik. The correct version of this script that should
19 be used with Org mode is distributed in the UTILITIES directory of the
20 Org mode distribution. Here is the basic workflow for this.
22 ** Access to the patchwork server
24 If you want to work on patchwork patches, you need write access at the
25 patchwork server. You need to contact John Wiegley to get this
28 There is a web interface to look at the patches and to change the
29 status of patches. This interface is self-explanatory. There is also
30 a command line script which can be very convenient to use.
34 To start testing a patch, first assign it to yourself
36 : pw update -s "Under Review" -d DELEGATE-NAME NNN
38 where =NNN= is a patch number and =DELEGATE-NAME= is your user name on
41 The get the patch into a branch:
45 This will create a local topic branch in your git repository with the
46 name =t/patchNNN=. You will also be switched to the branch so that
47 you can immediately start testing it. Quite often small amends need
48 to be made, or documentation has to be added. Also, many contributors
49 do not yet provide the proper ChangeLog-like entries in the commit
50 message for the patch. As a maintainer, you have two options here.
51 Either ask the contributor to make the changes and resubmit the patch,
52 or fix it yourself. In principle, asking to contributor to change the
53 patch until it is complete is the best route, because it will educate
54 the contributor and minimize the work for the maintainer. However,
55 sometimes it can be less hassle to fix things directly and commit the
56 changes to the same branch =t/patchNNN=.
58 If you ask the contributor to make the changes, the patch should be
59 marked on the patchwork server as "changes requested".
61 : pw update -s "Changed Requested" -m "What to change" NNN
63 This will send an email to the contributor and the mailing list with a
64 request for changes. The =-m= message should not be more than one
65 sentence and describe the requested changes. If you need to explain
66 in more detail, write a separate email to the contributor.
68 When a new version of the patch arrives, you mark the old one as
71 : pw update -s "Superseded" NNN
73 and start working at the new one.
75 ** Merging a final patch
77 Once the patch has been iterated and is final (including the
78 ChangeLog-like entries in the commit message), it should be merged.
79 The assumption here is that the final version of the patch is given by
80 the HEAD state in the branch =t/patchNNN=. To merge, do this:
82 : pw merge -m "maintainer comment" NNN
84 This will merge the patch into master, switch back to master and send
85 an email to both contributor and mailing list stating that this change
86 has been accepted, along with the comment given in the =-m= message.
88 At some point you might then want to remove the topic branch
96 The release number for main releases look like this: =7.13=
98 Main releases are made whenever Org is in a state where the feature
99 set is consistent and we feel that the features that are implemented
100 is something we want to support in the future.
102 A major release turns the current state of the master branch into a
103 release. The release process is a single make command:
105 : make release TAG=7.13
107 Before issuing this command, you should make sure that everything
108 during the process will work right, you can do so my running
110 : make testrelease TAG=7.13
112 When this fails, make sure to clean up. =git reset --hard= if
113 necessary, and check if there are unwanted files, directories, or
114 branches left over from the testing.
118 The release number for minor releases look like this: =7.13.01=
120 Minor releases are small amends to main releases. Usually they fix
121 bugs discovered in a main release. Only the fix to the bug is
122 bundled into a release, without the main development work going on in
123 the master branch. Since the bug fix will also be needed in the
124 master branch, usually the fix is made in master and then
125 cherry-picked into maint. When this is done, a release is made from
126 maint with this command:
128 : make fixrelease TAG=7.13.01
132 While working on master between releases, I use something like
133 7.02trans as the version string. To set this version string in all
136 : UTILITIES/set_version 7.02trans
138 and commit the result. Note that the above command does not change
139 the version string in the file from which Org's homepage is
140 generated. To change that as well, you would use a =--all= flag. TO
141 change only this file, use =--only=.
143 * Synchonization with Emacs
145 This is still a significant headache. Some hand work is needed here.
147 Emacs uses bzr, and while I see all the advantages this would have, I
148 cannot bring myself to switch away from git for my day-to-day work.
149 So the way I have been doing things with Emacs is this:
151 1. I do not update the version in Emacs too often. Just once every
152 few month - this is frequently enough for the Emacs release cycle.
154 2. I watch the Emacs diffs for changes made by the maintainers of
155 Emacs in the org-mode files in Emacs. Any changes that come up
156 there, I merge into the development version of Org-mode.
157 Occasionally I do not do this, if I do not agree with a change.
158 The changes go into Org /without/ a ChangeLog-like entry in the
159 commit message. The reason for this is that we will later generate
160 a ChangeLog file from our commit messages, and I do not want double
161 ChangeLog entries in the Emacs ChangeLog file.
163 3. When I have made a release (usually I wait for the minor releases
164 to stabilize), I *copy* org files into the Emacs repository. Yes,
165 I do not merge, I copy. This has been the source of some problems
166 in the past - but I have not had the patience to work out a better
167 mechanism, and I really dislike the idea that the version in Emacs
168 starts diverging from my own.
170 Careful: Copy /org.texi/ and /orgcard.tex/ into the right places,
171 and also copy the lisp files with *two exceptions*: Do *not* copy
172 /org-colview-xemacs.el/ and /org-install.el/. The former does not
173 belong in Emacs. And the latter would actually be harmful because
174 Emacs generates its own autoloads. The Emacs distribution contains
175 an empty org-install.el, so that users can have =(require
176 'org-install)= in .emacs with no ill effects. So if you were to
177 copy org-install.el, you would overwrite that empty placeholder
180 4. Generate the ChangeLog entries
182 For this, I do in the org-mode git repository
184 : UTILITIES/make_emacs_changelog release_7.02.05..release_7.03.02
186 This will spit out ChangeLog entries (for the given commit range)
187 that need to go into the ChangeLog files in Emacs. Org-mode
188 contributes to 3 different ChangeLog files in Emacs:
190 : lisp/org/ChangeLog (for lisp changes)
191 : doc/misc/ChangeLog (for org.texi changes)
192 : etc/ChangeLog (for refcard changes)
194 When you run the =make_emacs_changelog= program, you will be
195 prompted for a date in ISO format YYYY-MM-DD, this date will be
196 used in the ChangeLog entries - Emacs wants these dates to be the
197 time when the change has been installed into Emacs, not the time
198 when we made the change in our own repository. You will also be
199 prompted for the kind of ChangeLog you want to make, possible
200 answers are =lisp=, =texi=, and =card=. The program will then
201 select the correct entries for the specified ChangeLog file. If
202 you don't like being prompted, you can give the date and type as
203 second and third command line arguments to =make_emacs_changelog=.
205 These entries need to be added to the ChangeLog files in Emacs.
206 You should, in the ChangeLog file, select the inserted region of
207 new entries and do =M-x fill-region=, so that the entries are
208 formatted correctly. I then do look through the entries quickly to
209 make sure they are formatted properly, that the email addresses
212 5. Commit the changes into the bzr repository and you are done. Emacs
213 developers often look throught the commit and make minor changes -
214 these need to be merged back into our own repo.
218 * Updating the list of hooks on Worg
220 The file org-configs/org-hooks.org contains a list of all hooks in
221 Org. This list has to be updated after hooks have been added or
222 removed. The perl script UTILITIES/list-hooks.pl creates the entire
223 section "Hooks and Function variables", including its level-one
224 headline. I guess babel code could be used to update this
225 automatically, but I have not implemented this - I have been doing
226 it by hand every few months.
228 * Copyright assignments
230 The maintainer needs to keep track of copyright assignments. The
231 list of all contributors from who we have the papers is kept on Worg
232 at http://orgmode.org/worg/org-contribute.php, so that committers
233 can check if a patch can go into the core.