IMPORTANT: The new development model for Org-mode.

IMPORTANT: The new development model for Org-mode.

[Carsten Dominik]

Dear Org-moders,

the time has come to change the development model of org-mode.
 From now on, Org-mode will be maintained in a public git
repository.  There are a number of reasons for this change:


- several people on the mailing list have asked for such
   a change, to make it easier to try out new things.

- I would like to keep the momentum org-mode has, and I am
   realizing that I might not be able to keep it up by myself.

- I want to make it easier for people to produce extensions
   that might not be part of the core, but will still be
   distributed with Org-mode, in a CONTRIB directory.  In fact,
   I hope that much of the development starts out in this
   directory, as extensions.  Maybe this will require more places
   where packages can hook into the code code - if yes, we
   will reate such hooks.  Maybe this will force us to make
   Org-mode more modular, which might be a good direction to take.

- GIT is very new for me and seem interesting, I would like to
   try it with a real, distributed project.  And I am sure that
   I will need help from more experience people once problems
   show up.

Below is the content of the README_GIT file in the repository,
to set the stage and to propose some rules.

Hope you'll stay with me on this, I am curious what might happen.

- Carsten

README_GIT
==========

Table of Contents
=================
1 Main rules
2 The CONTRIB directory


1 Main rules
~~~~~~~~~~~~

1. The git repository is hosted publicly at repo.or.cs.  Anyone
    can get a clone of the current repository state using the
    command

      git clone git://repo.or.cz/org-mode.git

    Having a clone is sufficient to start hacking and to produce
    patches that can easily and consistently be applied to the
    main repository.

2. People who are interested to participate in the Org-mode
    development can do so by sending patches to
    emacs-orgmode@gnu.org.

3. An interested developer can also request push access to the
    central repository by sending his/her user-info at repo.or.cz
    the maintainer of Org-mode.  By requesting push access, you
    acknowledge that you have read and agreed with the following
    rules:

    - Org-mode is part of Emacs.  Therefore we need to be very
      conscious about changes moving into the Org-mode core.
      These can originate only from people who have signed the
      appropriate papers with the free software foundation.  The
      files to which this applies are:

      - all *.el files in the root directory of the repository
      - org.texi, orgcard.tex, and ChangeLog.

    - Before making any significant changes, please explain and
      discuss them on the mailing list emacs-orgmode@gnu.org.

      This does obviously not apply to people who are maintaining
      their own contributions to Org-mode.  Please, just use the
      new mechanism to make sure all changes end up in the right
      place.

    - Creating and pushing a change to the Org-mode core requires
      you also to provide ChangeLog entries.  Just press `C-x 4 a'
      in each function or variable you have modified and describe
      the change you made in the ChangeLog buffer/file.

    - Among other things, Org-mode is widely appreciated because
      if its simplicity, cleanness and consistency.  We should try
      hard to preserve this and I would like to ask everyone to
      keep this in mind when developing changes.

2 The CONTRIB directory
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The git repository contains a CONTRIB directory.  This directory
is the playing field for any developer, also people who have not
(yet) signed the papers with the FSF.  You are free to add files
to this directory, implementing extensions, new link types etc.
Also non-Lisp extensions like scripts to process Org-mode files
in different ways are welcome in this directory.  You should
provide documentation with your extensions, at least in the form
of commentary in the file.  Please discuss your extensions on
emacs-orgmode@gnu.org.

The CONTRIB directory will be part of the Org-mode distribution
starting with version 6.0 (the first release after 5.20).  When
that happens, people who want to use extensions will have to make
sure their search path (executable or Lisp) includes the relevant
directories.

After files have been tested in CONTRIB and found to be generally
useful, we may decide to clarify copyright questions and then
move the file into the Org-mode core.  This means they will be
moved up to the root directory and will also eventually be added
to Emacs CVS tree.  The final decision about this rests with the
maintainer.