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Reid Spencer8d0ac692007-02-13 09:06:01 +0000[diff] [blame]6 <title>LLVM Developer Policy</title>
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9<body>
Reid Spencer8d0ac692007-02-13 09:06:01 +0000[diff] [blame]10
11<div class="doc_title">LLVM Developer Policy</div>
Reid Spencer8d0ac692007-02-13 09:06:01 +0000[diff] [blame]12<ol>
Reid Spencer78bade22007-02-14 07:22:19 +0000[diff] [blame]13 <li><a href="#introduction">Introduction</a></li>
Chris Lattner1ff20cd2007-02-19 06:05:58 +0000[diff] [blame]14 <li><a href="#policies">Developer Policies</a>
Reid Spencer8d0ac692007-02-13 09:06:01 +0000[diff] [blame]15 <ol>
Chris Lattner1653fec2007-02-19 05:57:29 +0000[diff] [blame]16 <li><a href="#informed">Stay Informed</a></li>
17 <li><a href="#patches">Making a Patch</a></li>
Reid Spencer8d0ac692007-02-13 09:06:01 +0000[diff] [blame]18 <li><a href="#reviews">Code Reviews</a></li>
Chris Lattnere268a402007-12-03 19:00:47 +0000[diff] [blame]19 <li><a href="#owners">Code Owners</a></li>
Reid Spencer8d0ac692007-02-13 09:06:01 +0000[diff] [blame]20 <li><a href="#testcases">Test Cases</a></li>
Chris Lattner1acdc952007-02-19 05:49:11 +0000[diff] [blame]21 <li><a href="#quality">Quality</a></li>
22 <li><a href="#commitaccess">Obtaining Commit Access</a></li>
Chris Lattner1ff20cd2007-02-19 06:05:58 +0000[diff] [blame]23 <li><a href="#newwork">Making a Major Change</a></li>
24 <li><a href="#incremental">Incremental Development</a></li>
Chris Lattnerc7d954e2007-02-19 05:43:04 +0000[diff] [blame]25 <li><a href="#attribution">Attribution of Changes</a></li>
Reid Spencer8d0ac692007-02-13 09:06:01 +0000[diff] [blame]26 </ol></li>
Chris Lattner793aa382007-02-19 06:19:16 +0000[diff] [blame]27 <li><a href="#clp">Copyright, License, and Patents</a>
Reid Spencer78bade22007-02-14 07:22:19 +0000[diff] [blame]28 <ol>
29 <li><a href="#copyright">Copyright</a></li>
30 <li><a href="#license">License</a></li>
Chris Lattner1ff20cd2007-02-19 06:05:58 +0000[diff] [blame]31 <li><a href="#patents">Patents</a></li>
Reid Spencer78bade22007-02-14 07:22:19 +0000[diff] [blame]32 <li><a href="#devagree">Developer Agreements</a></li>
33 </ol></li>
Reid Spencer8d0ac692007-02-13 09:06:01 +0000[diff] [blame]34</ol>
Chris Lattner2ae49dd2007-02-19 06:24:23 +0000[diff] [blame]35<div class="doc_author">Written by the LLVM Oversight Team</div>
Reid Spencer8d0ac692007-02-13 09:06:01 +0000[diff] [blame]36
37<!--=========================================================================-->
Reid Spencere7bd7d62007-02-14 17:24:04 +0000[diff] [blame]38<div class="doc_section"><a name="introduction">Introduction</a></div>
Reid Spencer8d0ac692007-02-13 09:06:01 +0000[diff] [blame]39<!--=========================================================================-->
40<div class="doc_text">
Bill Wendling78c8fce2009-04-05 12:37:44 +0000[diff] [blame]41<p>This document contains the LLVM Developer Policy which defines the project's
42 policy towards developers and their contributions. The intent of this policy
43 is to eliminate miscommunication, rework, and confusion that might arise from
44 the distributed nature of LLVM's development. By stating the policy in clear
45 terms, we hope each developer can know ahead of time what to expect when
46 making LLVM contributions.</p>
47<p>This policy is also designed to accomplish the following objectives:</p>
48
49<ol>
50 <li>Attract both users and developers to the LLVM project.</li>
51
52 <li>Make life as simple and easy for contributors as possible.</li>
53
54 <li>Keep the top of Subversion trees as stable as possible.</li>
55</ol>
Chris Lattnerc7d954e2007-02-19 05:43:04 +0000[diff] [blame]56
Bill Wendling78c8fce2009-04-05 12:37:44 +0000[diff] [blame]57<p>This policy is aimed at frequent contributors to LLVM. People interested in
58 contributing one-off patches can do so in an informal way by sending them to
59 the
60 <a href="http://lists.cs.uiuc.edu/mailman/listinfo/llvm-commits">llvm-commits
61 mailing list</a> and engaging another developer to see it through the
62 process.</p>
Reid Spencer8d0ac692007-02-13 09:06:01 +0000[diff] [blame]63</div>
Reid Spencer8d0ac692007-02-13 09:06:01 +0000[diff] [blame]64
65<!--=========================================================================-->
Chris Lattner1ff20cd2007-02-19 06:05:58 +0000[diff] [blame]66<div class="doc_section"><a name="policies">Developer Policies</a></div>
Reid Spencer8d0ac692007-02-13 09:06:01 +0000[diff] [blame]67<!--=========================================================================-->
68<div class="doc_text">
Bill Wendling78c8fce2009-04-05 12:37:44 +0000[diff] [blame]69<p>This section contains policies that pertain to frequent LLVM developers. We
70 always welcome <a href="#patches">one-off patches</a> from people who do not
71 routinely contribute to LLVM, but we expect more from frequent contributors
72 to keep the system as efficient as possible for everyone. Frequent LLVM
73 contributors are expected to meet the following requirements in order for
74 LLVM to maintain a high standard of quality.<p>
Reid Spencer8d0ac692007-02-13 09:06:01 +0000[diff] [blame]75</div>
76
77<!-- _______________________________________________________________________ -->
78<div class="doc_subsection"> <a name="informed">Stay Informed</a> </div>
79<div class="doc_text">
Bill Wendling78c8fce2009-04-05 12:37:44 +0000[diff] [blame]80<p>Developers should stay informed by reading at least the
81 <a href="http://lists.cs.uiuc.edu/mailman/listinfo/llvmdev">llvmdev</a> email
82 list. If you are doing anything more than just casual work on LLVM, it is
83 suggested that you also subscribe to the
84 <a href="http://lists.cs.uiuc.edu/mailman/listinfo/llvm-commits">llvm-commits</a>
Reid Spencer01f56be2007-02-14 16:21:10 +0000[diff] [blame]85 list and pay attention to changes being made by others.</p>
Bill Wendling78c8fce2009-04-05 12:37:44 +0000[diff] [blame]86
87<p>We recommend that active developers register an email account with
88 <a href="http://llvm.org/bugs/">LLVM Bugzilla</a> and preferably subscribe to
89 the <a href="http://lists.cs.uiuc.edu/mailman/listinfo/llvmbugs">llvm-bugs</a>
90 email list to keep track of bugs and enhancements occurring in LLVM.</p>
Reid Spencer8d0ac692007-02-13 09:06:01 +0000[diff] [blame]91</div>
92
93<!-- _______________________________________________________________________ -->
Chris Lattner1653fec2007-02-19 05:57:29 +0000[diff] [blame]94<div class="doc_subsection"> <a name="patches">Making a Patch</a></div>
95
96<div class="doc_text">
Bill Wendling78c8fce2009-04-05 12:37:44 +0000[diff] [blame]97<p>When making a patch for review, the goal is to make it as easy for the
98 reviewer to read it as possible. As such, we recommend that you:</p>
Chris Lattner1653fec2007-02-19 05:57:29 +0000[diff] [blame]99
Bill Wendling78c8fce2009-04-05 12:37:44 +0000[diff] [blame]100<ol>
101 <li>Make your patch against the Subversion trunk, not a branch, and not an old
102 version of LLVM. This makes it easy to apply the patch.</li>
Chris Lattner1653fec2007-02-19 05:57:29 +0000[diff] [blame]103
Bill Wendling78c8fce2009-04-05 12:37:44 +0000[diff] [blame]104 <li>Similarly, patches should be submitted soon after they are generated. Old
105 patches may not apply correctly if the underlying code changes between the
106 time the patch was created and the time it is applied.</li>
107
108 <li>Patches should be made with this command:
109<div class="doc_code">
110<pre>
Chris Lattner87922322009-06-15 04:18:54 +0000[diff] [blame]111svn diff
Bill Wendling78c8fce2009-04-05 12:37:44 +0000[diff] [blame]112</pre>
113</div>
114 or with the utility <tt>utils/mkpatch</tt>, which makes it easy to read
115 the diff.</li>
116
117 <li>Patches should not include differences in generated code such as the code
118 generated by <tt>autoconf</tt> or <tt>tblgen</tt>. The
119 <tt>utils/mkpatch</tt> utility takes care of this for you.</li>
120</ol>
Chris Lattner0cca50c2007-02-19 06:57:16 +0000[diff] [blame]121
Bill Wendling78c8fce2009-04-05 12:37:44 +0000[diff] [blame]122<p>When sending a patch to a mailing list, it is a good idea to send it as an
123 <em>attachment</em> to the message, not embedded into the text of the
124 message. This ensures that your mailer will not mangle the patch when it
125 sends it (e.g. by making whitespace changes or by wrapping lines).</p>
126
127<p><em>For Thunderbird users:</em> Before submitting a patch, please open
128 <em>Preferences &#8594; Advanced &#8594; General &#8594; Config Editor</em>,
129 find the key <tt>mail.content_disposition_type</tt>, and set its value to
130 <tt>1</tt>. Without this setting, Thunderbird sends your attachment using
131 <tt>Content-Disposition: inline</tt> rather than <tt>Content-Disposition:
132 attachment</tt>. Apple Mail gamely displays such a file inline, making it
133 difficult to work with for reviewers using that program.</p>
Chris Lattner1653fec2007-02-19 05:57:29 +0000[diff] [blame]134</div>
135
136<!-- _______________________________________________________________________ -->
Reid Spencer8d0ac692007-02-13 09:06:01 +0000[diff] [blame]137<div class="doc_subsection"> <a name="reviews">Code Reviews</a></div>
138<div class="doc_text">
Bill Wendling78c8fce2009-04-05 12:37:44 +0000[diff] [blame]139<p>LLVM has a code review policy. Code review is one way to increase the quality
140 of software. We generally follow these policies:</p>
Chris Lattner0cca50c2007-02-19 06:57:16 +0000[diff] [blame]141
Bill Wendling78c8fce2009-04-05 12:37:44 +0000[diff] [blame]142<ol>
143 <li>All developers are required to have significant changes reviewed before
144 they are committed to the repository.</li>
145
146 <li>Code reviews are conducted by email, usually on the llvm-commits
147 list.</li>
148
149 <li>Code can be reviewed either before it is committed or after. We expect
150 major changes to be reviewed before being committed, but smaller changes
151 (or changes where the developer owns the component) can be reviewed after
152 commit.</li>
153
154 <li>The developer responsible for a code change is also responsible for making
155 all necessary review-related changes.</li>
156
157 <li>Code review can be an iterative process, which continues until the patch
158 is ready to be committed.</li>
159</ol>
160
161<p>Developers should participate in code reviews as both reviewers and
162 reviewees. If someone is kind enough to review your code, you should return
163 the favor for someone else. Note that anyone is welcome to review and give
164 feedback on a patch, but only people with Subversion write access can approve
165 it.</p>
Reid Spencer8d0ac692007-02-13 09:06:01 +0000[diff] [blame]166</div>
Reid Spencer8d0ac692007-02-13 09:06:01 +0000[diff] [blame]167
168<!-- _______________________________________________________________________ -->
Chris Lattnere268a402007-12-03 19:00:47 +0000[diff] [blame]169<div class="doc_subsection"> <a name="owners">Code Owners</a></div>
170<div class="doc_text">
171
Bill Wendling78c8fce2009-04-05 12:37:44 +0000[diff] [blame]172<p>The LLVM Project relies on two features of its process to maintain rapid
173 development in addition to the high quality of its source base: the
174 combination of code review plus post-commit review for trusted maintainers.
175 Having both is a great way for the project to take advantage of the fact that
176 most people do the right thing most of the time, and only commit patches
177 without pre-commit review when they are confident they are right.</p>
Chris Lattnere268a402007-12-03 19:00:47 +0000[diff] [blame]178
Bill Wendling78c8fce2009-04-05 12:37:44 +0000[diff] [blame]179<p>The trick to this is that the project has to guarantee that all patches that
180 are committed are reviewed after they go in: you don't want everyone to
181 assume someone else will review it, allowing the patch to go unreviewed. To
182 solve this problem, we have a notion of an 'owner' for a piece of the code.
183 The sole responsibility of a code owner is to ensure that a commit to their
184 area of the code is appropriately reviewed, either by themself or by someone
185 else. The current code owners are:</p>
Chris Lattnere268a402007-12-03 19:00:47 +0000[diff] [blame]186
Bill Wendling78c8fce2009-04-05 12:37:44 +0000[diff] [blame]187<ol>
188 <li><b>Anton Korobeynikov</b>: Exception handling, debug information, and
189 Windows codegen.</li>
190
191 <li><b>Duncan Sands</b>: llvm-gcc 4.2.</li>
192
193 <li><b>Evan Cheng</b>: Code generator and all targets.</li>
194
195 <li><b>Chris Lattner</b>: Everything else.</li>
196</ol>
Chris Lattnere268a402007-12-03 19:00:47 +0000[diff] [blame]197
Bill Wendling78c8fce2009-04-05 12:37:44 +0000[diff] [blame]198<p>Note that code ownership is completely different than reviewers: anyone can
199 review a piece of code, and we welcome code review from anyone who is
200 interested. Code owners are the "last line of defense" to guarantee that all
201 patches that are committed are actually reviewed.</p>
Chris Lattnere268a402007-12-03 19:00:47 +0000[diff] [blame]202
Bill Wendling78c8fce2009-04-05 12:37:44 +0000[diff] [blame]203<p>Being a code owner is a somewhat unglamorous position, but it is incredibly
204 important for the ongoing success of the project. Because people get busy,
205 interests change, and unexpected things happen, code ownership is purely
206 opt-in, and anyone can choose to resign their "title" at any time. For now,
207 we do not have an official policy on how one gets elected to be a code
208 owner.</p>
Chris Lattnere268a402007-12-03 19:00:47 +0000[diff] [blame]209</div>
210
Chris Lattnere268a402007-12-03 19:00:47 +0000[diff] [blame]211<!-- _______________________________________________________________________ -->
Reid Spencer8d0ac692007-02-13 09:06:01 +0000[diff] [blame]212<div class="doc_subsection"> <a name="testcases">Test Cases</a></div>
213<div class="doc_text">
Bill Wendling78c8fce2009-04-05 12:37:44 +0000[diff] [blame]214<p>Developers are required to create test cases for any bugs fixed and any new
215 features added. Some tips for getting your testcase approved:</p>
216
217<ol>
218 <li>All feature and regression test cases are added to the
219 <tt>llvm/test</tt> directory. The appropriate sub-directory should be
220 selected (see the <a href="TestingGuide.html">Testing Guide</a> for
221 details).</li>
222
223 <li>Test cases should be written in <a href="LangRef.html">LLVM assembly
224 language</a> unless the feature or regression being tested requires
225 another language (e.g. the bug being fixed or feature being implemented is
226 in the llvm-gcc C++ front-end, in which case it must be written in
227 C++).</li>
228
229 <li>Test cases, especially for regressions, should be reduced as much as
230 possible, by <a href="Bugpoint.html">bugpoint</a> or manually. It is
231 unacceptable to place an entire failing program into <tt>llvm/test</tt> as
232 this creates a <i>time-to-test</i> burden on all developers. Please keep
233 them short.</li>
234</ol>
Chris Lattner0cca50c2007-02-19 06:57:16 +0000[diff] [blame]235
Bill Wendling78c8fce2009-04-05 12:37:44 +0000[diff] [blame]236<p>Note that llvm/test is designed for regression and small feature tests
237 only. More extensive test cases (e.g., entire applications, benchmarks, etc)
238 should be added to the <tt>llvm-test</tt> test suite. The llvm-test suite is
239 for coverage (correctness, performance, etc) testing, not feature or
240 regression testing.</p>
Reid Spencer8d0ac692007-02-13 09:06:01 +0000[diff] [blame]241</div>
242
Chris Lattner450f40a2007-02-19 03:50:31 +0000[diff] [blame]243<!-- _______________________________________________________________________ -->
Chris Lattner39582bd2007-02-19 05:47:13 +0000[diff] [blame]244<div class="doc_subsection"> <a name="quality">Quality</a></div>
245<div class="doc_text">
Bill Wendling78c8fce2009-04-05 12:37:44 +0000[diff] [blame]246<p>The minimum quality standards that any change must satisfy before being
247 committed to the main development branch are:</p>
248
249<ol>
250 <li>Code must adhere to the <a href="CodingStandards.html">LLVM Coding
251 Standards</a>.</li>
252
253 <li>Code must compile cleanly (no errors, no warnings) on at least one
254 platform.</li>
255
256 <li>Bug fixes and new features should <a href="#testcases">include a
257 testcase</a> so we know if the fix/feature ever regresses in the
258 future.</li>
259
260 <li>Code must pass the dejagnu (<tt>llvm/test</tt>) test suite.</li>
261
262 <li>The code must not cause regressions on a reasonable subset of llvm-test,
263 where "reasonable" depends on the contributor's judgement and the scope of
264 the change (more invasive changes require more testing). A reasonable
265 subset might be something like
266 "<tt>llvm-test/MultiSource/Benchmarks</tt>".</li>
267</ol>
268
269<p>Additionally, the committer is responsible for addressing any problems found
270 in the future that the change is responsible for. For example:</p>
271
272<ul>
273 <li>The code should compile cleanly on all supported platforms.</li>
274
275 <li>The changes should not cause any correctness regressions in the
276 <tt>llvm-test</tt> suite and must not cause any major performance
277 regressions.</li>
278
279 <li>The change set should not cause performance or correctness regressions for
280 the LLVM tools.</li>
281
282 <li>The changes should not cause performance or correctness regressions in
283 code compiled by LLVM on all applicable targets.</li>
284
285 <li>You are expected to address any <a href="http://llvm.org/bugs/">bugzilla
286 bugs</a> that result from your change.</li>
287</ul>
Chris Lattner39582bd2007-02-19 05:47:13 +0000[diff] [blame]288
Bill Wendling78c8fce2009-04-05 12:37:44 +0000[diff] [blame]289<p>We prefer for this to be handled before submission but understand that it
Chris Lattnerd7f10d32009-08-01 19:25:25 +0000[diff] [blame]290 isn't possible to test all of this for every submission. Our build bots and
291 nightly testing infrastructure normally finds these problems. A good rule of
292 thumb is to check the nightly testers for regressions the day after your
293 change. Build bots will directly email you if a group of commits that
294 included yours caused a failure. You are expected to check the build bot
295 messages to see if they are your fault and, if so, fix the breakage.</p>
Bill Wendling78c8fce2009-04-05 12:37:44 +0000[diff] [blame]296
297<p>Commits that violate these quality standards (e.g. are very broken) may be
298 reverted. This is necessary when the change blocks other developers from
299 making progress. The developer is welcome to re-commit the change after the
300 problem has been fixed.</p>
Chris Lattner39582bd2007-02-19 05:47:13 +0000[diff] [blame]301</div>
302
303<!-- _______________________________________________________________________ -->
Chris Lattner1acdc952007-02-19 05:49:11 +0000[diff] [blame]304<div class="doc_subsection">
305 <a name="commitaccess">Obtaining Commit Access</a></div>
Chris Lattner450f40a2007-02-19 03:50:31 +0000[diff] [blame]306<div class="doc_text">
307
Bill Wendling78c8fce2009-04-05 12:37:44 +0000[diff] [blame]308<p>We grant commit access to contributors with a track record of submitting high
309 quality patches. If you would like commit access, please send an email to
310 <a href="mailto:sabre@nondot.org">Chris</a> with the following
311 information:</p>
Chris Lattnerbebcdabd82007-12-03 00:36:20 +0000[diff] [blame]312
313<ol>
Bill Wendling78c8fce2009-04-05 12:37:44 +0000[diff] [blame]314 <li>The user name you want to commit with, e.g. "hacker".</li>
315
Chris Lattnerbebcdabd82007-12-03 00:36:20 +0000[diff] [blame]316 <li>The full name and email address you want message to llvm-commits to come
Bill Wendling78c8fce2009-04-05 12:37:44 +0000[diff] [blame]317 from, e.g. "J. Random Hacker &lt;hacker@yoyodyne.com&gt;".</li>
318
Chris Lattnerbebcdabd82007-12-03 00:36:20 +0000[diff] [blame]319 <li>A "password hash" of the password you want to use, e.g. "2ACR96qjUqsyM".
320 Note that you don't ever tell us what your password is, you just give it
321 to us in an encrypted form. To get this, run "htpasswd" (a utility that
322 comes with apache) in crypt mode (often enabled with "-d"), or find a web
323 page that will do it for you.</li>
324</ol>
325
326<p>Once you've been granted commit access, you should be able to check out an
327 LLVM tree with an SVN URL of "https://username@llvm.org/..." instead of the
328 normal anonymous URL of "http://llvm.org/...". The first time you commit
329 you'll have to type in your password. Note that you may get a warning from
330 SVN about an untrusted key, you can ignore this. To verify that your commit
331 access works, please do a test commit (e.g. change a comment or add a blank
332 line). Your first commit to a repository may require the autogenerated email
333 to be approved by a mailing list. This is normal, and will be done when
334 the mailing list owner has time.</p>
Chris Lattner450f40a2007-02-19 03:50:31 +0000[diff] [blame]335
336<p>If you have recently been granted commit access, these policies apply:</p>
Chris Lattnerbebcdabd82007-12-03 00:36:20 +0000[diff] [blame]337
Chris Lattner450f40a2007-02-19 03:50:31 +0000[diff] [blame]338<ol>
Bill Wendling78c8fce2009-04-05 12:37:44 +0000[diff] [blame]339 <li>You are granted <i>commit-after-approval</i> to all parts of LLVM. To get
340 approval, submit a <a href="#patches">patch</a> to
341 <a href="http://lists.cs.uiuc.edu/mailman/listinfo/llvm-commits">llvm-commits</a>.
342 When approved you may commit it yourself.</li>
343
Chris Lattner450f40a2007-02-19 03:50:31 +0000[diff] [blame]344 <li>You are allowed to commit patches without approval which you think are
Bill Wendling78c8fce2009-04-05 12:37:44 +0000[diff] [blame]345 obvious. This is clearly a subjective decision &mdash; we simply expect
346 you to use good judgement. Examples include: fixing build breakage,
347 reverting obviously broken patches, documentation/comment changes, any
348 other minor changes.</li>
349
350 <li>You are allowed to commit patches without approval to those portions of
351 LLVM that you have contributed or maintain (i.e., have been assigned
352 responsibility for), with the proviso that such commits must not break the
353 build. This is a "trust but verify" policy and commits of this nature are
354 reviewed after they are committed.</li>
355
356 <li>Multiple violations of these policies or a single egregious violation may
357 cause commit access to be revoked.</li>
Chris Lattner450f40a2007-02-19 03:50:31 +0000[diff] [blame]358</ol>
Chris Lattner0cca50c2007-02-19 06:57:16 +0000[diff] [blame]359
360<p>In any case, your changes are still subject to <a href="#reviews">code
Bill Wendling78c8fce2009-04-05 12:37:44 +0000[diff] [blame]361 review</a> (either before or after they are committed, depending on the
362 nature of the change). You are encouraged to review other peoples' patches
363 as well, but you aren't required to.</p>
Chris Lattner450f40a2007-02-19 03:50:31 +0000[diff] [blame]364</div>
365
366<!-- _______________________________________________________________________ -->
Chris Lattnerc7d954e2007-02-19 05:43:04 +0000[diff] [blame]367<div class="doc_subsection"> <a name="newwork">Making a Major Change</a></div>
368<div class="doc_text">
Bill Wendling78c8fce2009-04-05 12:37:44 +0000[diff] [blame]369<p>When a developer begins a major new project with the aim of contributing it
370 back to LLVM, s/he should inform the community with an email to
371 the <a href="http://lists.cs.uiuc.edu/mailman/listinfo/llvmdev">llvmdev</a>
372 email list, to the extent possible. The reason for this is to:
373
374<ol>
375 <li>keep the community informed about future changes to LLVM, </li>
376
377 <li>avoid duplication of effort by preventing multiple parties working on the
378 same thing and not knowing about it, and</li>
379
380 <li>ensure that any technical issues around the proposed work are discussed
381 and resolved before any significant work is done.</li>
382</ol>
Chris Lattnerc7d954e2007-02-19 05:43:04 +0000[diff] [blame]383
Bill Wendling78c8fce2009-04-05 12:37:44 +0000[diff] [blame]384<p>The design of LLVM is carefully controlled to ensure that all the pieces fit
385 together well and are as consistent as possible. If you plan to make a major
386 change to the way LLVM works or want to add a major new extension, it is a
387 good idea to get consensus with the development community before you start
388 working on it.</p>
Chris Lattnerc7d954e2007-02-19 05:43:04 +0000[diff] [blame]389
Bill Wendling78c8fce2009-04-05 12:37:44 +0000[diff] [blame]390<p>Once the design of the new feature is finalized, the work itself should be
391 done as a series of <a href="#incremental">incremental changes</a>, not as a
392 long-term development branch.</p>
Chris Lattnerc7d954e2007-02-19 05:43:04 +0000[diff] [blame]393</div>
394
395<!-- _______________________________________________________________________ -->
Chris Lattner1ff20cd2007-02-19 06:05:58 +0000[diff] [blame]396<div class="doc_subsection"> <a name="incremental">Incremental Development</a>
Chris Lattner450f40a2007-02-19 03:50:31 +0000[diff] [blame]397</div>
398<div class="doc_text">
Bill Wendling78c8fce2009-04-05 12:37:44 +0000[diff] [blame]399<p>In the LLVM project, we do all significant changes as a series of incremental
400 patches. We have a strong dislike for huge changes or long-term development
401 branches. Long-term development branches have a number of drawbacks:</p>
402
403<ol>
404 <li>Branches must have mainline merged into them periodically. If the branch
405 development and mainline development occur in the same pieces of code,
406 resolving merge conflicts can take a lot of time.</li>
407
408 <li>Other people in the community tend to ignore work on branches.</li>
409
410 <li>Huge changes (produced when a branch is merged back onto mainline) are
411 extremely difficult to <a href="#reviews">code review</a>.</li>
412
413 <li>Branches are not routinely tested by our nightly tester
414 infrastructure.</li>
415
416 <li>Changes developed as monolithic large changes often don't work until the
417 entire set of changes is done. Breaking it down into a set of smaller
418 changes increases the odds that any of the work will be committed to the
419 main repository.</li>
420</ol>
Chris Lattner450f40a2007-02-19 03:50:31 +0000[diff] [blame]421
Bill Wendling78c8fce2009-04-05 12:37:44 +0000[diff] [blame]422<p>To address these problems, LLVM uses an incremental development style and we
423 require contributors to follow this practice when making a large/invasive
424 change. Some tips:</p>
425
426<ul>
427 <li>Large/invasive changes usually have a number of secondary changes that are
428 required before the big change can be made (e.g. API cleanup, etc). These
429 sorts of changes can often be done before the major change is done,
430 independently of that work.</li>
431
432 <li>The remaining inter-related work should be decomposed into unrelated sets
433 of changes if possible. Once this is done, define the first increment and
434 get consensus on what the end goal of the change is.</li>
435
436 <li>Each change in the set can be stand alone (e.g. to fix a bug), or part of
437 a planned series of changes that works towards the development goal.</li>
438
439 <li>Each change should be kept as small as possible. This simplifies your work
440 (into a logical progression), simplifies code review and reduces the
441 chance that you will get negative feedback on the change. Small increments
442 also facilitate the maintenance of a high quality code base.</li>
443
444 <li>Often, an independent precursor to a big change is to add a new API and
445 slowly migrate clients to use the new API. Each change to use the new API
446 is often "obvious" and can be committed without review. Once the new API
447 is in place and used, it is much easier to replace the underlying
448 implementation of the API. This implementation change is logically
449 separate from the API change.</li>
450</ul>
Chris Lattner450f40a2007-02-19 03:50:31 +0000[diff] [blame]451
Bill Wendling78c8fce2009-04-05 12:37:44 +0000[diff] [blame]452<p>If you are interested in making a large change, and this scares you, please
453 make sure to first <a href="#newwork">discuss the change/gather consensus</a>
454 then ask about the best way to go about making the change.</p>
Chris Lattner450f40a2007-02-19 03:50:31 +0000[diff] [blame]455</div>
456
457<!-- _______________________________________________________________________ -->
Chris Lattnerc7d954e2007-02-19 05:43:04 +0000[diff] [blame]458<div class="doc_subsection"><a name="attribution">Attribution of
459Changes</a></div>
Chris Lattner450f40a2007-02-19 03:50:31 +0000[diff] [blame]460<div class="doc_text">
Bill Wendling78c8fce2009-04-05 12:37:44 +0000[diff] [blame]461<p>We believe in correct attribution of contributions to their contributors.
462 However, we do not want the source code to be littered with random
463 attributions "this code written by J. Random Hacker" (this is noisy and
464 distracting). In practice, the revision control system keeps a perfect
465 history of who changed what, and the CREDITS.txt file describes higher-level
466 contributions. If you commit a patch for someone else, please say "patch
467 contributed by J. Random Hacker!" in the commit message.</p>
Chris Lattnerab2b10c2007-12-29 19:56:08 +0000[diff] [blame]468
Bill Wendling78c8fce2009-04-05 12:37:44 +0000[diff] [blame]469<p>Overall, please do not add contributor names to the source code.</p>
Chris Lattner450f40a2007-02-19 03:50:31 +0000[diff] [blame]470</div>
471
Reid Spencer8d0ac692007-02-13 09:06:01 +0000[diff] [blame]472<!--=========================================================================-->
Chris Lattner793aa382007-02-19 06:19:16 +0000[diff] [blame]473<div class="doc_section">
474 <a name="clp">Copyright, License, and Patents</a>
475</div>
Reid Spencer78bade22007-02-14 07:22:19 +0000[diff] [blame]476<!--=========================================================================-->
Chris Lattner450f40a2007-02-19 03:50:31 +0000[diff] [blame]477
Reid Spencer78bade22007-02-14 07:22:19 +0000[diff] [blame]478<div class="doc_text">
Bill Wendling78c8fce2009-04-05 12:37:44 +0000[diff] [blame]479<p>This section addresses the issues of copyright, license and patents for the
480 LLVM project. Currently, the University of Illinois is the LLVM copyright
481 holder and the terms of its license to LLVM users and developers is the
482 <a href="http://www.opensource.org/licenses/UoI-NCSA.php">University of
483 Illinois/NCSA Open Source License</a>.</p>
Reid Spencer78bade22007-02-14 07:22:19 +0000[diff] [blame]484
485<div class="doc_notes">
Bill Wendling78c8fce2009-04-05 12:37:44 +0000[diff] [blame]486<p style="text-align:center;font-weight:bold">NOTE: This section deals with
487 legal matters but does not provide legal advice. We are not lawyers, please
488 seek legal counsel from an attorney.</p>
Reid Spencer78bade22007-02-14 07:22:19 +0000[diff] [blame]489</div>
Reid Spencer78bade22007-02-14 07:22:19 +0000[diff] [blame]490</div>
491
492<!-- _______________________________________________________________________ -->
493<div class="doc_subsection"><a name="copyright">Copyright</a></div>
494<div class="doc_text">
Bill Wendling78c8fce2009-04-05 12:37:44 +0000[diff] [blame]495<p>For consistency and ease of management, the project requires the copyright
496 for all LLVM software to be held by a single copyright holder: the University
497 of Illinois (UIUC).</p>
Chris Lattner450f40a2007-02-19 03:50:31 +0000[diff] [blame]498
Bill Wendling78c8fce2009-04-05 12:37:44 +0000[diff] [blame]499<p>Although UIUC may eventually reassign the copyright of the software to
500 another entity (e.g. a dedicated non-profit "LLVM Organization") the intent
501 for the project is to always have a single entity hold the copyrights to LLVM
502 at any given time.</p>
Chris Lattner305915b2008-05-20 20:06:53 +0000[diff] [blame]503
Bill Wendling78c8fce2009-04-05 12:37:44 +0000[diff] [blame]504<p>We believe that having a single copyright holder is in the best interests of
505 all developers and users as it greatly reduces the managerial burden for any
506 kind of administrative or technical decisions about LLVM. The goal of the
507 LLVM project is to always keep the code open and <a href="#license">licensed
508 under a very liberal license</a>.</p>
Reid Spencer78bade22007-02-14 07:22:19 +0000[diff] [blame]509</div>
Chris Lattner450f40a2007-02-19 03:50:31 +0000[diff] [blame]510
Reid Spencer78bade22007-02-14 07:22:19 +0000[diff] [blame]511<!-- _______________________________________________________________________ -->
512<div class="doc_subsection"><a name="license">License</a></div>
513<div class="doc_text">
Bill Wendling78c8fce2009-04-05 12:37:44 +0000[diff] [blame]514<p>We intend to keep LLVM perpetually open source and to use a liberal open
515 source license. The current license is the
516 <a href="http://www.opensource.org/licenses/UoI-NCSA.php">University of
517 llinois/NCSA Open Source License</a>, which boils down to this:</p>
Chris Lattner450f40a2007-02-19 03:50:31 +0000[diff] [blame]518
Bill Wendling78c8fce2009-04-05 12:37:44 +0000[diff] [blame]519<ul>
520 <li>You can freely distribute LLVM.</li>
521
522 <li>You must retain the copyright notice if you redistribute LLVM.</li>
523
524 <li>Binaries derived from LLVM must reproduce the copyright notice (e.g. in
525 an included readme file).</li>
526
527 <li>You can't use our names to promote your LLVM derived products.</li>
528
529 <li>There's no warranty on LLVM at all.</li>
530</ul>
531
532<p>We believe this fosters the widest adoption of LLVM because it <b>allows
533 commercial products to be derived from LLVM</b> with few restrictions and
534 without a requirement for making any derived works also open source (i.e.
535 LLVM's license is not a "copyleft" license like the GPL). We suggest that you
536 read the <a href="http://www.opensource.org/licenses/UoI-NCSA.php">License</a>
537 if further clarification is needed.</p>
538
539<p>Note that the LLVM Project does distribute llvm-gcc, <b>which is GPL.</b>
540 This means that anything "linked" into llvm-gcc must itself be compatible
541 with the GPL, and must be releasable under the terms of the GPL. This
542 implies that <b>any code linked into llvm-gcc and distributed to others may
543 be subject to the viral aspects of the GPL</b> (for example, a proprietary
544 code generator linked into llvm-gcc must be made available under the GPL).
545 This is not a problem for code already distributed under a more liberal
546 license (like the UIUC license), and does not affect code generated by
547 llvm-gcc. It may be a problem if you intend to base commercial development
548 on llvm-gcc without redistributing your source code.</p>
549
550<p>We have no plans to change the license of LLVM. If you have questions or
551 comments about the license, please contact the
552 <a href="mailto:llvm-oversight@cs.uiuc.edu">LLVM Oversight Group</a>.</p>
Reid Spencer78bade22007-02-14 07:22:19 +0000[diff] [blame]553</div>
Chris Lattner1ff20cd2007-02-19 06:05:58 +0000[diff] [blame]554
555<!-- _______________________________________________________________________ -->
556<div class="doc_subsection"><a name="patents">Patents</a></div>
557<div class="doc_text">
Chris Lattnerb87fb2a2007-02-19 06:13:50 +0000[diff] [blame]558<p>To the best of our knowledge, LLVM does not infringe on any patents (we have
559 actually removed code from LLVM in the past that was found to infringe).
Bill Wendling78c8fce2009-04-05 12:37:44 +0000[diff] [blame]560 Having code in LLVM that infringes on patents would violate an important goal
561 of the project by making it hard or impossible to reuse the code for
Chris Lattnerd0742ce2007-02-19 06:15:33 +0000[diff] [blame]562 arbitrary purposes (including commercial use).</p>
Chris Lattnerb87fb2a2007-02-19 06:13:50 +0000[diff] [blame]563
564<p>When contributing code, we expect contributors to notify us of any potential
Bill Wendling78c8fce2009-04-05 12:37:44 +0000[diff] [blame]565 for patent-related trouble with their changes. If you or your employer own
566 the rights to a patent and would like to contribute code to LLVM that relies
567 on it, we require that the copyright owner sign an agreement that allows any
568 other user of LLVM to freely use your patent. Please contact
569 the <a href="mailto:llvm-oversight@cs.uiuc.edu">oversight group</a> for more
Chris Lattnerb87fb2a2007-02-19 06:13:50 +0000[diff] [blame]570 details.</p>
Chris Lattner1ff20cd2007-02-19 06:05:58 +0000[diff] [blame]571</div>
572
Reid Spencer78bade22007-02-14 07:22:19 +0000[diff] [blame]573<!-- _______________________________________________________________________ -->
574<div class="doc_subsection"><a name="devagree">Developer Agreements</a></div>
575<div class="doc_text">
Bill Wendling78c8fce2009-04-05 12:37:44 +0000[diff] [blame]576<p>With regards to the LLVM copyright and licensing, developers agree to assign
577 their copyrights to UIUC for any contribution made so that the entire
578 software base can be managed by a single copyright holder. This implies that
579 any contributions can be licensed under the license that the project
580 uses.</p>
Chris Lattner64a4c112008-05-22 03:06:14 +0000[diff] [blame]581
Bill Wendling78c8fce2009-04-05 12:37:44 +0000[diff] [blame]582<p>When contributing code, you also affirm that you are legally entitled to
583 grant this copyright, personally or on behalf of your employer. If the code
584 belongs to some other entity, please raise this issue with the oversight
585 group before the code is committed.</p>
Reid Spencer78bade22007-02-14 07:22:19 +0000[diff] [blame]586</div>
587
Reid Spencer8d0ac692007-02-13 09:06:01 +0000[diff] [blame]588<!-- *********************************************************************** -->
589<hr>
590<address>
591 <a href="http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/check/referer"><img
Misha Brukman44408702008-12-11 17:34:48 +0000[diff] [blame]592 src="http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/images/vcss-blue" alt="Valid CSS"></a>
Reid Spencer8d0ac692007-02-13 09:06:01 +0000[diff] [blame]593 <a href="http://validator.w3.org/check/referer"><img
Misha Brukmanf00ddb02008-12-11 18:23:24 +0000[diff] [blame]594 src="http://www.w3.org/Icons/valid-html401-blue" alt="Valid HTML 4.01"></a>
Chris Lattnerd0742ce2007-02-19 06:15:33 +0000[diff] [blame]595 Written by the
Reid Spencer3eedbd32007-02-14 07:57:48 +0000[diff] [blame]596 <a href="mailto:llvm-oversight@cs.uiuc.edu">LLVM Oversight Group</a><br>
Reid Spencer8d0ac692007-02-13 09:06:01 +0000[diff] [blame]597 <a href="http://llvm.org">The LLVM Compiler Infrastructure</a><br>
598 Last modified: $Date$
599</address>
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