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16<h1>Getting Involved with the Clang Project</h1>
17
18<p>Once you have <a href="get_started.html">checked out and built</a> clang and
19played around with it, you might be wondering what you can do to make it better
20and contribute to its development. Alternatively, maybe you just want to follow
21the development of the project to see it progress.
22</p>
23
24<h2>Follow what's going on</h2>
25
26<p>Clang is a subproject of the <a href="http://llvm.org">LLVM Project</a>, but
27has its own mailing lists because the communities have people with different
28interests. The two clang lists are:</p>
29
30<ul>
31<li><a href="http://lists.cs.uiuc.edu/mailman/listinfo/cfe-commits">cfe-commits
32</a> - This list is for patch submission/discussion.</li>
33
34<li><a href="http://lists.cs.uiuc.edu/mailman/listinfo/cfe-dev">cfe-dev</a> -
35This list is for everything else clang related (questions and answers, bug
36reports, etc).</li>
37
38</ul>
39
40<p>If you are interested in clang only, these two lists should be all
41you need. If you are interested in the LLVM optimizer and code generator,
42please consider signing up for <a
43href="http://lists.cs.uiuc.edu/mailman/listinfo/llvmdev">llvmdev</a> and <a
44href="http://lists.cs.uiuc.edu/mailman/listinfo/llvm-commits">llvm-commits</a>
45as well.</p>
46
47
48<p>The best way to talk with other developers on the project is through the <a
49href="http://lists.cs.uiuc.edu/mailman/listinfo/cfe-dev">cfe-dev mailing
50list</a>. The clang mailing list is a very friendly place and we welcome
51newcomers. In addition to the cfe-dev list, a significant amount of design
52discussion takes place on the <a
53href="http://lists.cs.uiuc.edu/mailman/listinfo/cfe-commits">cfe-commits mailing
54list</a>. All of these lists have archives, so you can browse through previous
55discussions or follow the list development on the web if you prefer.</p>
56
Douglas Gregor40619f32011-07-23 19:21:07 +000057<p>If you're looking for something to work on, check out our <a href="OpenProjects.html">Open Projects</a> page or go look through the <a href="http://llvm.org/bugs/">Bugzilla bug database</a>.</p>
58
Douglas Gregor2da9f5d2011-07-23 19:22:17 +000059<h2 name="criteria">Contributing Extensions to Clang</h2>
Douglas Gregor40619f32011-07-23 19:21:07 +000060
61<p>Clang has always been designed as a platform for experimentation,
62allowing programmers to easily extend the compiler to support great
63new language features and tools. At some point, the authors of these
64extensions may propose that the extensions become a part of Clang
65itself, to benefit the whole Clang community. But not every idea--not
66even every great idea--should become part of Clang. Extensions
67(particularly language extensions) pose a long-term maintenance burden
68on Clang, and therefore the benefits of the extension must outweight
69those costs. Hence, these are the seven criteria used to evaluate the
70merits of a proposed extension:</p>
71
72<ol>
73 <li>Evidence of a significant user community: This is based on a number of factors, including an actual, existing user community, the perceived likelihood that users would adopt such a feature if it were available, and any "trickle-down" effects that come from, e.g., a library adopting the feature and providing benefits to its users.</li>
74
75 <li>A specific need to reside within the Clang tree: There are some extensions that would be better expressed as a separate tool, and should remain as separate tools even if they end up being hosted as part of the LLVM umbrella project.</li>
76
77 <li>A complete specification: The specification must be sufficient to understand the design of the feature as well as interpret the meaning of specific examples. The specification should be detailed enough that another compiler vendor could conceivably implement the feature.</li>
78
79 <li>Representation within the appropriate governing organization: For extensions to a language governed by a standards committee (C, C++, OpenCL), the extension itself must have an active proposal and proponent within that committee and have a reasonable chance of acceptance. Clang should drive the standard, not diverge from it. This criterion does not apply to all extensions, since some extensions fall outside of the realm of the standards bodies.</li>
80
81 <li>A long-term support plan: Contributing a non-trivial extension to Clang implies a commitment to supporting that extension, improving the implementation and specification as Clang evolves. The capacity of the contributor to make that commitment is as important as the commitment itself.</li>
82
83 <li>A high-quality implementation: The implementation must fit well into Clang's architecture, follow LLVM's coding conventions, and meet Clang's quality standards, including high-quality diagnostics and rich AST representations. This is particularly important for language extensions, because users will learn how those extensions work through the behavior of the compiler.</li>
84
85 <li>A proper test suite: Extensive testing is crucial to ensure that the language extension is not broken by ongoing maintenance in Clang. The test suite should be complete enough that another compiler vendor could conceivably validate their implementation of the feature against it.</li>
86</ol>
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