inetutils/README-alpha

This is the GNU Inetutils package.
Copyright (C) 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007,
2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
See end of file for copying conditions.

This document describes the actions needed to build the pre-release or
Git version of the package.

* Introduction

This is a *pre-release* version, and not ready for production use yet.
If you are taking source from Git, you will need to have several
special tools to help contribute.  See chapter `Building', below,
for the detailed instructions on how to build the package.

Please, note that the accompanying documentation may be inaccurate or
incomplete.  See ChangeLog for the list of recent changes.

Report bugs to <bug-inetutils@gnu.org>

If you see a problem that you've already reported, feel free to
re-report it -- it won't bother us to get a reminder.  Besides, the
more messages we get regarding a particular problem the sooner it'll
be fixed -- usually.  If you sent a complete patch and nobody applied
it or got back to you, please let us know!

* Checking Out the Sources

The following instructions apply if you wish to obtain sources from
the Git repository:

To clone the source tree from the repository, issue the following command:

  git clone git://git.savannah.gnu.org/inetutils.git

This will give you read-only access.  If you think you need write access,
contact the mailing list.

* Prerequisites

You need the following packages to build the development version of
GNU Inetutils.  We don't make any extra effort to accommodate older
versions of these packages, so please make sure that you have the
latest stable version.

- Autoconf <http://www.gnu.org/software/autoconf/>
- Automake <http://www.gnu.org/software/automake/>
- Bison <http://www.gnu.org/software/bison/>
- Gnulib <http://www.gnu.org/software/gnulib/>
- M4 <http://www.gnu.org/software/m4/>
- Texinfo <http://www.gnu.org/software/texinfo>
- help2man <http://www.gnu.org/software/help2man>

* Building

1. Change to the source tree directory

   cd inetutils

2. Run

   ./bootstrap

Once done, proceed as described in the file INSTALL.

Normally you will have to run bootstrap only once.  However, if you
intend to hack on Inetutils, you might need to run it again later.  In
this case, you will probably want to save some time and bandwidth by
avoiding downloading the same files again.  If so, create in the
inetutils root directory the file named `.bootstrap' with the
following contents:

   --gnulib-srcdir=$HOME/gnulib --skip-po

Replace `$HOME/gnulib' with the actual directory where the gnulib
sources reside.

For more information about `bootstrap', run `bootstrap --help'.

Before running "make dist" in a freshly bootstrapped directory, you
need to have run "make" at least once to create the binaries which are
needed by help2man when generating man pages.

See INSTALL and README for the detailed instructions.

* Development

If you are looking for something to hack on, please take a look at the
TODO file in the Git repository.

You can track the development process through the <commit-inetutils@gnu.org>
mailing list.  This is a medium volume moderated list.

Daily snapshots built from Git are available from
<http://hydra.nixos.org/view/gnu/inetutils-master/latest>.

Log outputs from building the daily snapshot on some systems are
available from <http://autobuild.josefsson.org/inetutils/>

Statistics based on Git commit logs are available from
<http://gitstats.josefsson.org/inetutils/>.

* Release procedures

[This is only useful for the maintainers of GNU inetutils.]

To make an release issue the following commands:

make alpha        # or stable

Finally, bump the version number in NEWS, and configure.ac.

When doing a stable release, do not forget to:

 - record the release date in NEWS
 - create a tag (inetutils-N_M)
 - post an announcment to info-gnu@gnu.org
 - update web manual and coverage testing

** Announcement template

Subject: inetutils-VERSION released

The GNU inetutils team is proud to present version VERSION of the GNU
network utilities suite.  The GNU network utilities suite provides the
following tools: ftp(d), hostname, ifconfig, inetd, logger, ping, rcp,
rexec(d), rlogin(d), rsh(d), syslogd, talk(d), telnet(d), tftp(d),
traceroute, uucpd, and whois.

The following things are new in this release:

FIXME: put recent NEWS items here

Please send bug reports to bug-inetutils@gnu.org.

Here are the compressed sources:
  ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/inetutils/inetutils-VERSION.tar.gz

Here are the GPG detached signatures[*]:
  ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/inetutils/inetutils-VERSION.tar.gz.sig

To reduce load on the main server, use a mirror listed at:
  http://www.gnu.org/order/ftp.html

[*] You can use either of the above signature files to verify that
the corresponding file (without the .sig suffix) is intact.  First,
be sure to download both the .sig file and the corresponding tarball.
Then, run a command like this:

  gpg --verify inetutils-VERSION.tar.gz.sig

If that command fails because you don't have the required public key,
then run this command to import it:

  gpg --keyserver keys.gnupg.net --recv-keys D95A3C35

and rerun the `gpg --verify' command.

Many thanks to all the people who contributed to this release.  Happy
hacking!

* Copyright information

Permission is granted to anyone to make or distribute verbatim copies
of this document as received, in any medium, provided that the
copyright notice and this permission notice are preserved,
thus giving the recipient permission to redistribute in turn.

Permission is granted to distribute modified versions
of this document, or of portions of it,
under the above conditions, provided also that they
carry prominent notices stating who last changed them.

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