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<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01//EN"
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"http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/strict.dtd">
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<html>
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<head>
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<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8">
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<title>LLVM Developer Policy</title>
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<link rel="stylesheet" href="llvm.css" type="text/css">
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</head>
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<body>
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<h1>LLVM Developer Policy</h1>
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<ol>
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<li><a href="#introduction">Introduction</a></li>
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<li><a href="#policies">Developer Policies</a>
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<ol>
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<li><a href="#informed">Stay Informed</a></li>
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<li><a href="#patches">Making a Patch</a></li>
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<li><a href="#reviews">Code Reviews</a></li>
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<li><a href="#owners">Code Owners</a></li>
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<li><a href="#testcases">Test Cases</a></li>
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<li><a href="#quality">Quality</a></li>
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<li><a href="#commitaccess">Obtaining Commit Access</a></li>
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<li><a href="#newwork">Making a Major Change</a></li>
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<li><a href="#incremental">Incremental Development</a></li>
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<li><a href="#attribution">Attribution of Changes</a></li>
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</ol></li>
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<li><a href="#clp">Copyright, License, and Patents</a>
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<ol>
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<li><a href="#copyright">Copyright</a></li>
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<li><a href="#license">License</a></li>
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<li><a href="#patents">Patents</a></li>
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</ol></li>
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</ol>
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<div class="doc_author">Written by the LLVM Oversight Team</div>
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<!--=========================================================================-->
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<h2><a name="introduction">Introduction</a></h2>
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<!--=========================================================================-->
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<div>
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<p>This document contains the LLVM Developer Policy which defines the project's
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policy towards developers and their contributions. The intent of this policy
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is to eliminate miscommunication, rework, and confusion that might arise from
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the distributed nature of LLVM's development. By stating the policy in clear
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terms, we hope each developer can know ahead of time what to expect when
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making LLVM contributions. This policy covers all llvm.org subprojects,
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including Clang, LLDB, etc.</p>
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<p>This policy is also designed to accomplish the following objectives:</p>
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<ol>
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<li>Attract both users and developers to the LLVM project.</li>
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<li>Make life as simple and easy for contributors as possible.</li>
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<li>Keep the top of Subversion trees as stable as possible.</li>
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</ol>
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<p>This policy is aimed at frequent contributors to LLVM. People interested in
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contributing one-off patches can do so in an informal way by sending them to
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the
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<a href="http://lists.cs.uiuc.edu/mailman/listinfo/llvm-commits">llvm-commits
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mailing list</a> and engaging another developer to see it through the
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process.</p>
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</div>
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<!--=========================================================================-->
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<h2><a name="policies">Developer Policies</a></h2>
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<!--=========================================================================-->
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<div>
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<p>This section contains policies that pertain to frequent LLVM developers. We
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always welcome <a href="#patches">one-off patches</a> from people who do not
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routinely contribute to LLVM, but we expect more from frequent contributors
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to keep the system as efficient as possible for everyone. Frequent LLVM
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contributors are expected to meet the following requirements in order for
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LLVM to maintain a high standard of quality.<p>
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<!-- _______________________________________________________________________ -->
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<h3><a name="informed">Stay Informed</a></h3>
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<div>
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<p>Developers should stay informed by reading at least the "dev" mailing list
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for the projects you are interested in, such as
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<a href="http://lists.cs.uiuc.edu/mailman/listinfo/llvmdev">llvmdev</a> for
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LLVM, <a href="http://lists.cs.uiuc.edu/mailman/listinfo/cfe-dev">cfe-dev</a>
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for Clang, or <a
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href="http://lists.cs.uiuc.edu/mailman/listinfo/lldb-dev">lldb-dev</a>
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for LLDB. If you are doing anything more than just casual work on LLVM, it
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is suggested that you also subscribe to the "commits" mailing list for the
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subproject you're interested in, such as
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<a href="http://lists.cs.uiuc.edu/mailman/listinfo/llvm-commits">llvm-commits</a>,
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<a href="http://lists.cs.uiuc.edu/mailman/listinfo/cfe-commits">cfe-commits</a>,
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or <a href="http://lists.cs.uiuc.edu/mailman/listinfo/lldb-commits">lldb-commits</a>.
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Reading the "commits" list and paying attention to changes being made by
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others is a good way to see what other people are interested in and watching
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the flow of the project as a whole.</p>
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<p>We recommend that active developers register an email account with
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<a href="http://llvm.org/bugs/">LLVM Bugzilla</a> and preferably subscribe to
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the <a href="http://lists.cs.uiuc.edu/mailman/listinfo/llvmbugs">llvm-bugs</a>
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email list to keep track of bugs and enhancements occurring in LLVM. We
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really appreciate people who are proactive at catching incoming bugs in their
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components and dealing with them promptly.</p>
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</div>
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<!-- _______________________________________________________________________ -->
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<h3><a name="patches">Making a Patch</a></h3>
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<div>
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<p>When making a patch for review, the goal is to make it as easy for the
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reviewer to read it as possible. As such, we recommend that you:</p>
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<ol>
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<li>Make your patch against the Subversion trunk, not a branch, and not an old
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version of LLVM. This makes it easy to apply the patch. For information
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on how to check out SVN trunk, please see the <a
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href="GettingStarted.html#checkout">Getting Started Guide</a>.</li>
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<li>Similarly, patches should be submitted soon after they are generated. Old
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patches may not apply correctly if the underlying code changes between the
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time the patch was created and the time it is applied.</li>
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<li>Patches should be made with <tt>svn diff</tt>, or similar. If you use
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a different tool, make sure it uses the <tt>diff -u</tt> format and
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that it doesn't contain clutter which makes it hard to read.</li>
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<li>If you are modifying generated files, such as the top-level
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<tt>configure</tt> script, please separate out those changes into
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a separate patch from the rest of your changes.</li>
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</ol>
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<p>When sending a patch to a mailing list, it is a good idea to send it as an
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<em>attachment</em> to the message, not embedded into the text of the
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message. This ensures that your mailer will not mangle the patch when it
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sends it (e.g. by making whitespace changes or by wrapping lines).</p>
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<p><em>For Thunderbird users:</em> Before submitting a patch, please open
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<em>Preferences → Advanced → General → Config Editor</em>,
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find the key <tt>mail.content_disposition_type</tt>, and set its value to
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<tt>1</tt>. Without this setting, Thunderbird sends your attachment using
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<tt>Content-Disposition: inline</tt> rather than <tt>Content-Disposition:
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attachment</tt>. Apple Mail gamely displays such a file inline, making it
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difficult to work with for reviewers using that program.</p>
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</div>
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<!-- _______________________________________________________________________ -->
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<h3><a name="reviews">Code Reviews</a></h3>
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<div>
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<p>LLVM has a code review policy. Code review is one way to increase the quality
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of software. We generally follow these policies:</p>
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<ol>
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<li>All developers are required to have significant changes reviewed before
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they are committed to the repository.</li>
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<li>Code reviews are conducted by email, usually on the llvm-commits
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list.</li>
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<li>Code can be reviewed either before it is committed or after. We expect
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major changes to be reviewed before being committed, but smaller changes
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(or changes where the developer owns the component) can be reviewed after
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commit.</li>
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<li>The developer responsible for a code change is also responsible for making
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all necessary review-related changes.</li>
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<li>Code review can be an iterative process, which continues until the patch
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is ready to be committed.</li>
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</ol>
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<p>Developers should participate in code reviews as both reviewers and
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reviewees. If someone is kind enough to review your code, you should return
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the favor for someone else. Note that anyone is welcome to review and give
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feedback on a patch, but only people with Subversion write access can approve
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it.</p>
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</div>
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<!-- _______________________________________________________________________ -->
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<h3><a name="owners">Code Owners</a></h3>
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<div>
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<p>The LLVM Project relies on two features of its process to maintain rapid
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development in addition to the high quality of its source base: the
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combination of code review plus post-commit review for trusted maintainers.
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Having both is a great way for the project to take advantage of the fact that
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most people do the right thing most of the time, and only commit patches
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without pre-commit review when they are confident they are right.</p>
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<p>The trick to this is that the project has to guarantee that all patches that
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are committed are reviewed after they go in: you don't want everyone to
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assume someone else will review it, allowing the patch to go unreviewed. To
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solve this problem, we have a notion of an 'owner' for a piece of the code.
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The sole responsibility of a code owner is to ensure that a commit to their
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area of the code is appropriately reviewed, either by themself or by someone
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else. The current code owners are:</p>
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<ol>
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<li><b>Evan Cheng</b>: Code generator and all targets.</li>
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<li><b>Greg Clayton</b>: LLDB.</li>
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<li><b>Doug Gregor</b>: Clang Frontend Libraries.</li>
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<li><b>Howard Hinnant</b>: libc++.</li>
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<li><b>Anton Korobeynikov</b>: Exception handling, debug information, and
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Windows codegen.</li>
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<li><b>Ted Kremenek</b>: Clang Static Analyzer.</li>
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<li><b>Chris Lattner</b>: Everything not covered by someone else.</li>
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<li><b>John McCall</b>: Clang LLVM IR generation.</li>
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<li><b>Jakob Olesen</b>: Register allocators and TableGen.</li>
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<li><b>Duncan Sands</b>: dragonegg and llvm-gcc 4.2.</li>
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</ol>
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<p>Note that code ownership is completely different than reviewers: anyone can
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review a piece of code, and we welcome code review from anyone who is
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interested. Code owners are the "last line of defense" to guarantee that all
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patches that are committed are actually reviewed.</p>
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<p>Being a code owner is a somewhat unglamorous position, but it is incredibly
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important for the ongoing success of the project. Because people get busy,
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interests change, and unexpected things happen, code ownership is purely
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opt-in, and anyone can choose to resign their "title" at any time. For now,
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we do not have an official policy on how one gets elected to be a code
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owner.</p>
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</div>
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<!-- _______________________________________________________________________ -->
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<h3><a name="testcases">Test Cases</a></h3>
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<div>
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<p>Developers are required to create test cases for any bugs fixed and any new
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features added. Some tips for getting your testcase approved:</p>
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<ol>
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<li>All feature and regression test cases are added to the
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<tt>llvm/test</tt> directory. The appropriate sub-directory should be
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selected (see the <a href="TestingGuide.html">Testing Guide</a> for
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details).</li>
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<li>Test cases should be written in <a href="LangRef.html">LLVM assembly
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language</a> unless the feature or regression being tested requires
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another language (e.g. the bug being fixed or feature being implemented is
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in the llvm-gcc C++ front-end, in which case it must be written in
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C++).</li>
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<li>Test cases, especially for regressions, should be reduced as much as
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possible, by <a href="Bugpoint.html">bugpoint</a> or manually. It is
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unacceptable to place an entire failing program into <tt>llvm/test</tt> as
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this creates a <i>time-to-test</i> burden on all developers. Please keep
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them short.</li>
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</ol>
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<p>Note that llvm/test and clang/test are designed for regression and small
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feature tests only. More extensive test cases (e.g., entire applications,
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benchmarks, etc)
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should be added to the <tt>llvm-test</tt> test suite. The llvm-test suite is
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for coverage (correctness, performance, etc) testing, not feature or
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regression testing.</p>
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</div>
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<!-- _______________________________________________________________________ -->
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<h3><a name="quality">Quality</a></h3>
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<div>
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<p>The minimum quality standards that any change must satisfy before being
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committed to the main development branch are:</p>
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<ol>
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<li>Code must adhere to the <a href="CodingStandards.html">LLVM Coding
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Standards</a>.</li>
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<li>Code must compile cleanly (no errors, no warnings) on at least one
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platform.</li>
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<li>Bug fixes and new features should <a href="#testcases">include a
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testcase</a> so we know if the fix/feature ever regresses in the
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future.</li>
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<li>Code must pass the <tt>llvm/test</tt> test suite.</li>
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<li>The code must not cause regressions on a reasonable subset of llvm-test,
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where "reasonable" depends on the contributor's judgement and the scope of
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the change (more invasive changes require more testing). A reasonable
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subset might be something like
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"<tt>llvm-test/MultiSource/Benchmarks</tt>".</li>
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</ol>
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<p>Additionally, the committer is responsible for addressing any problems found
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in the future that the change is responsible for. For example:</p>
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<ul>
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<li>The code should compile cleanly on all supported platforms.</li>
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<li>The changes should not cause any correctness regressions in the
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<tt>llvm-test</tt> suite and must not cause any major performance
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regressions.</li>
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<li>The change set should not cause performance or correctness regressions for
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the LLVM tools.</li>
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<li>The changes should not cause performance or correctness regressions in
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code compiled by LLVM on all applicable targets.</li>
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<li>You are expected to address any <a href="http://llvm.org/bugs/">bugzilla
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bugs</a> that result from your change.</li>
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</ul>
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<p>We prefer for this to be handled before submission but understand that it
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isn't possible to test all of this for every submission. Our build bots and
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nightly testing infrastructure normally finds these problems. A good rule of
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thumb is to check the nightly testers for regressions the day after your
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change. Build bots will directly email you if a group of commits that
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included yours caused a failure. You are expected to check the build bot
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messages to see if they are your fault and, if so, fix the breakage.</p>
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<p>Commits that violate these quality standards (e.g. are very broken) may be
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reverted. This is necessary when the change blocks other developers from
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making progress. The developer is welcome to re-commit the change after the
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problem has been fixed.</p>
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</div>
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<!-- _______________________________________________________________________ -->
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<h3><a name="commitaccess">Obtaining Commit Access</a></h3>
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<div>
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<p>We grant commit access to contributors with a track record of submitting high
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quality patches. If you would like commit access, please send an email to
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<a href="mailto:sabre@nondot.org">Chris</a> with the following
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information:</p>
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<ol>
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<li>The user name you want to commit with, e.g. "hacker".</li>
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<li>The full name and email address you want message to llvm-commits to come
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from, e.g. "J. Random Hacker <hacker@yoyodyne.com>".</li>
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<li>A "password hash" of the password you want to use, e.g. "2ACR96qjUqsyM".
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Note that you don't ever tell us what your password is, you just give it
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to us in an encrypted form. To get this, run "htpasswd" (a utility that
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comes with apache) in crypt mode (often enabled with "-d"), or find a web
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page that will do it for you.</li>
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</ol>
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<p>Once you've been granted commit access, you should be able to check out an
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LLVM tree with an SVN URL of "https://username@llvm.org/..." instead of the
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normal anonymous URL of "http://llvm.org/...". The first time you commit
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you'll have to type in your password. Note that you may get a warning from
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SVN about an untrusted key, you can ignore this. To verify that your commit
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access works, please do a test commit (e.g. change a comment or add a blank
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line). Your first commit to a repository may require the autogenerated email
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to be approved by a mailing list. This is normal, and will be done when
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the mailing list owner has time.</p>
|
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<p>If you have recently been granted commit access, these policies apply:</p>
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<ol>
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<li>You are granted <i>commit-after-approval</i> to all parts of LLVM. To get
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approval, submit a <a href="#patches">patch</a> to
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<a href="http://lists.cs.uiuc.edu/mailman/listinfo/llvm-commits">llvm-commits</a>.
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When approved you may commit it yourself.</li>
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<li>You are allowed to commit patches without approval which you think are
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obvious. This is clearly a subjective decision — we simply expect
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you to use good judgement. Examples include: fixing build breakage,
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reverting obviously broken patches, documentation/comment changes, any
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other minor changes.</li>
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<li>You are allowed to commit patches without approval to those portions of
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LLVM that you have contributed or maintain (i.e., have been assigned
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responsibility for), with the proviso that such commits must not break the
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build. This is a "trust but verify" policy and commits of this nature are
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reviewed after they are committed.</li>
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<li>Multiple violations of these policies or a single egregious violation may
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cause commit access to be revoked.</li>
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</ol>
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<p>In any case, your changes are still subject to <a href="#reviews">code
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review</a> (either before or after they are committed, depending on the
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nature of the change). You are encouraged to review other peoples' patches
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as well, but you aren't required to.</p>
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</div>
|
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|
|
<!-- _______________________________________________________________________ -->
|
|
<h3><a name="newwork">Making a Major Change</a></h3>
|
|
<div>
|
|
<p>When a developer begins a major new project with the aim of contributing it
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back to LLVM, s/he should inform the community with an email to
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the <a href="http://lists.cs.uiuc.edu/mailman/listinfo/llvmdev">llvmdev</a>
|
|
email list, to the extent possible. The reason for this is to:
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|
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|
<ol>
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<li>keep the community informed about future changes to LLVM, </li>
|
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|
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<li>avoid duplication of effort by preventing multiple parties working on the
|
|
same thing and not knowing about it, and</li>
|
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<li>ensure that any technical issues around the proposed work are discussed
|
|
and resolved before any significant work is done.</li>
|
|
</ol>
|
|
|
|
<p>The design of LLVM is carefully controlled to ensure that all the pieces fit
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together well and are as consistent as possible. If you plan to make a major
|
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change to the way LLVM works or want to add a major new extension, it is a
|
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good idea to get consensus with the development community before you start
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working on it.</p>
|
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|
<p>Once the design of the new feature is finalized, the work itself should be
|
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done as a series of <a href="#incremental">incremental changes</a>, not as a
|
|
long-term development branch.</p>
|
|
</div>
|
|
|
|
<!-- _______________________________________________________________________ -->
|
|
<h3><a name="incremental">Incremental Development</a></h3>
|
|
<div>
|
|
<p>In the LLVM project, we do all significant changes as a series of incremental
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|
patches. We have a strong dislike for huge changes or long-term development
|
|
branches. Long-term development branches have a number of drawbacks:</p>
|
|
|
|
<ol>
|
|
<li>Branches must have mainline merged into them periodically. If the branch
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|
development and mainline development occur in the same pieces of code,
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|
resolving merge conflicts can take a lot of time.</li>
|
|
|
|
<li>Other people in the community tend to ignore work on branches.</li>
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|
|
<li>Huge changes (produced when a branch is merged back onto mainline) are
|
|
extremely difficult to <a href="#reviews">code review</a>.</li>
|
|
|
|
<li>Branches are not routinely tested by our nightly tester
|
|
infrastructure.</li>
|
|
|
|
<li>Changes developed as monolithic large changes often don't work until the
|
|
entire set of changes is done. Breaking it down into a set of smaller
|
|
changes increases the odds that any of the work will be committed to the
|
|
main repository.</li>
|
|
</ol>
|
|
|
|
<p>To address these problems, LLVM uses an incremental development style and we
|
|
require contributors to follow this practice when making a large/invasive
|
|
change. Some tips:</p>
|
|
|
|
<ul>
|
|
<li>Large/invasive changes usually have a number of secondary changes that are
|
|
required before the big change can be made (e.g. API cleanup, etc). These
|
|
sorts of changes can often be done before the major change is done,
|
|
independently of that work.</li>
|
|
|
|
<li>The remaining inter-related work should be decomposed into unrelated sets
|
|
of changes if possible. Once this is done, define the first increment and
|
|
get consensus on what the end goal of the change is.</li>
|
|
|
|
<li>Each change in the set can be stand alone (e.g. to fix a bug), or part of
|
|
a planned series of changes that works towards the development goal.</li>
|
|
|
|
<li>Each change should be kept as small as possible. This simplifies your work
|
|
(into a logical progression), simplifies code review and reduces the
|
|
chance that you will get negative feedback on the change. Small increments
|
|
also facilitate the maintenance of a high quality code base.</li>
|
|
|
|
<li>Often, an independent precursor to a big change is to add a new API and
|
|
slowly migrate clients to use the new API. Each change to use the new API
|
|
is often "obvious" and can be committed without review. Once the new API
|
|
is in place and used, it is much easier to replace the underlying
|
|
implementation of the API. This implementation change is logically
|
|
separate from the API change.</li>
|
|
</ul>
|
|
|
|
<p>If you are interested in making a large change, and this scares you, please
|
|
make sure to first <a href="#newwork">discuss the change/gather consensus</a>
|
|
then ask about the best way to go about making the change.</p>
|
|
</div>
|
|
|
|
<!-- _______________________________________________________________________ -->
|
|
<h3><a name="attribution">Attribution of Changes</a></h3>
|
|
<div>
|
|
<p>We believe in correct attribution of contributions to their contributors.
|
|
However, we do not want the source code to be littered with random
|
|
attributions "this code written by J. Random Hacker" (this is noisy and
|
|
distracting). In practice, the revision control system keeps a perfect
|
|
history of who changed what, and the CREDITS.txt file describes higher-level
|
|
contributions. If you commit a patch for someone else, please say "patch
|
|
contributed by J. Random Hacker!" in the commit message.</p>
|
|
|
|
<p>Overall, please do not add contributor names to the source code.</p>
|
|
</div>
|
|
|
|
</div>
|
|
|
|
<!--=========================================================================-->
|
|
<h2>
|
|
<a name="clp">Copyright, License, and Patents</a>
|
|
</h2>
|
|
<!--=========================================================================-->
|
|
|
|
<div>
|
|
<p>This section addresses the issues of copyright, license and patents for the
|
|
LLVM project. The copyright holder for the code is held by the individual
|
|
contributors of the code and the terms of its license to LLVM users and
|
|
developers is the
|
|
<a href="http://www.opensource.org/licenses/UoI-NCSA.php">University of
|
|
Illinois/NCSA Open Source License</a>.</p>
|
|
|
|
<div class="doc_notes">
|
|
<p style="text-align:center;font-weight:bold">NOTE: This section deals with
|
|
legal matters but does not provide legal advice. We are not lawyers, please
|
|
seek legal counsel from an attorney.</p>
|
|
</div>
|
|
|
|
<!-- _______________________________________________________________________ -->
|
|
<h3><a name="copyright">Copyright</a></h3>
|
|
<div>
|
|
|
|
<p>The LLVM project does not require copyright assignments, which means that the
|
|
copyright for the code in the project is held by its respective contributors
|
|
who have each agreed to release their contributed code under the terms of the
|
|
<a href="#license">LLVM License</a>.</p>
|
|
|
|
<p>An implication of this is that the LLVM license is unlikely to ever change:
|
|
changing it would require tracking down all the contributors to LLVM and
|
|
getting them to agree that a license change is acceptable for their
|
|
contribution. Since there are no plans to change the license, this is not a
|
|
cause for concern.</p>
|
|
|
|
<p>As a contributor to the project, this means that you (or your company) retain
|
|
ownership of the code you contribute, that it cannot be used in a way that
|
|
contradicts the license (which is a liberal BSD-style license), and that the
|
|
license for your contributions won't change without your approval in the
|
|
future.</p>
|
|
|
|
</div>
|
|
|
|
<!-- _______________________________________________________________________ -->
|
|
<h3><a name="license">License</a></h3>
|
|
<div>
|
|
<p>We intend to keep LLVM perpetually open source and to use a liberal open
|
|
source license. All of the code in LLVM is available under the
|
|
<a href="http://www.opensource.org/licenses/UoI-NCSA.php">University of
|
|
Illinois/NCSA Open Source License</a>, which boils down to this:</p>
|
|
|
|
<ul>
|
|
<li>You can freely distribute LLVM.</li>
|
|
<li>You must retain the copyright notice if you redistribute LLVM.</li>
|
|
<li>Binaries derived from LLVM must reproduce the copyright notice (e.g. in an
|
|
included readme file).</li>
|
|
<li>You can't use our names to promote your LLVM derived products.</li>
|
|
<li>There's no warranty on LLVM at all.</li>
|
|
</ul>
|
|
|
|
<p>We believe this fosters the widest adoption of LLVM because it <b>allows
|
|
commercial products to be derived from LLVM</b> with few restrictions and
|
|
without a requirement for making any derived works also open source (i.e.
|
|
LLVM's license is not a "copyleft" license like the GPL). We suggest that you
|
|
read the <a href="http://www.opensource.org/licenses/UoI-NCSA.php">License</a>
|
|
if further clarification is needed.</p>
|
|
|
|
<p>In addition to the UIUC license, the runtime library components of LLVM
|
|
(<b>compiler_rt and libc++</b>) are also licensed under the <a
|
|
href="http://www.opensource.org/licenses/mit-license.php">MIT license</a>,
|
|
which does not contain the binary redistribution clause. As a user of these
|
|
runtime libraries, it means that you can choose to use the code under either
|
|
license (and thus don't need the binary redistribution clause), and as a
|
|
contributor to the code that you agree that any contributions to these
|
|
libraries be licensed under both licenses. We feel that this is important
|
|
for runtime libraries, because they are implicitly linked into applications
|
|
and therefore should not subject those applications to the binary
|
|
redistribution clause. This also means that it is ok to move code from (e.g.)
|
|
libc++ to the LLVM core without concern, but that code cannot be moved from
|
|
the LLVM core to libc++ without the copyright owner's permission.
|
|
</p>
|
|
|
|
<p>Note that the LLVM Project does distribute llvm-gcc, <b>which is GPL.</b>
|
|
This means that anything "linked" into llvm-gcc must itself be compatible
|
|
with the GPL, and must be releasable under the terms of the GPL. This
|
|
implies that <b>any code linked into llvm-gcc and distributed to others may
|
|
be subject to the viral aspects of the GPL</b> (for example, a proprietary
|
|
code generator linked into llvm-gcc must be made available under the GPL).
|
|
This is not a problem for code already distributed under a more liberal
|
|
license (like the UIUC license), and does not affect code generated by
|
|
llvm-gcc. It may be a problem if you intend to base commercial development
|
|
on llvm-gcc without redistributing your source code.</p>
|
|
|
|
<p>We have no plans to change the license of LLVM. If you have questions or
|
|
comments about the license, please contact the
|
|
<a href="mailto:llvmdev@cs.uiuc.edu">LLVM Developer's Mailing List</a>.</p>
|
|
</div>
|
|
|
|
<!-- _______________________________________________________________________ -->
|
|
<h3><a name="patents">Patents</a></h3>
|
|
<div>
|
|
<p>To the best of our knowledge, LLVM does not infringe on any patents (we have
|
|
actually removed code from LLVM in the past that was found to infringe).
|
|
Having code in LLVM that infringes on patents would violate an important goal
|
|
of the project by making it hard or impossible to reuse the code for
|
|
arbitrary purposes (including commercial use).</p>
|
|
|
|
<p>When contributing code, we expect contributors to notify us of any potential
|
|
for patent-related trouble with their changes. If you or your employer own
|
|
the rights to a patent and would like to contribute code to LLVM that relies
|
|
on it, we require that the copyright owner sign an agreement that allows any
|
|
other user of LLVM to freely use your patent. Please contact
|
|
the <a href="mailto:llvm-oversight@cs.uiuc.edu">oversight group</a> for more
|
|
details.</p>
|
|
</div>
|
|
|
|
</div>
|
|
|
|
<!-- *********************************************************************** -->
|
|
<hr>
|
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<address>
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src="http://www.w3.org/Icons/valid-html401-blue" alt="Valid HTML 4.01"></a>
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Written by the
|
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<a href="mailto:llvm-oversight@cs.uiuc.edu">LLVM Oversight Group</a><br>
|
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<a href="http://llvm.org/">The LLVM Compiler Infrastructure</a><br>
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