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+.. _developer_policy:
+
+=====================
+LLVM Developer Policy
+=====================
+
+.. contents::
+ :local:
+
+Introduction
+============
+
+This document contains the LLVM Developer Policy which defines the project's
+policy towards developers and their contributions. The intent of this policy is
+to eliminate miscommunication, rework, and confusion that might arise from the
+distributed nature of LLVM's development. By stating the policy in clear terms,
+we hope each developer can know ahead of time what to expect when making LLVM
+contributions. This policy covers all llvm.org subprojects, including Clang,
+LLDB, libc++, etc.
+
+This policy is also designed to accomplish the following objectives:
+
+#. Attract both users and developers to the LLVM project.
+
+#. Make life as simple and easy for contributors as possible.
+
+#. Keep the top of Subversion trees as stable as possible.
+
+#. Establish awareness of the project's `copyright, license, and patent
+ policies`_ with contributors to the project.
+
+This policy is aimed at frequent contributors to LLVM. People interested in
+contributing one-off patches can do so in an informal way by sending them to the
+`llvm-commits mailing list
+<http://lists.cs.uiuc.edu/mailman/listinfo/llvm-commits>`_ and engaging another
+developer to see it through the process.
+
+Developer Policies
+==================
+
+This section contains policies that pertain to frequent LLVM developers. We
+always welcome `one-off patches`_ from people who do not routinely contribute to
+LLVM, but we expect more from frequent contributors to keep the system as
+efficient as possible for everyone. Frequent LLVM contributors are expected to
+meet the following requirements in order for LLVM to maintain a high standard of
+quality.
+
+Stay Informed
+-------------
+
+Developers should stay informed by reading at least the "dev" mailing list for
+the projects you are interested in, such as `llvmdev
+<http://lists.cs.uiuc.edu/mailman/listinfo/llvmdev>`_ for LLVM, `cfe-dev
+<http://lists.cs.uiuc.edu/mailman/listinfo/cfe-dev>`_ for Clang, or `lldb-dev
+<http://lists.cs.uiuc.edu/mailman/listinfo/lldb-dev>`_ for LLDB. If you are
+doing anything more than just casual work on LLVM, it is suggested that you also
+subscribe to the "commits" mailing list for the subproject you're interested in,
+such as `llvm-commits
+<http://lists.cs.uiuc.edu/mailman/listinfo/llvm-commits>`_, `cfe-commits
+<http://lists.cs.uiuc.edu/mailman/listinfo/cfe-commits>`_, or `lldb-commits
+<http://lists.cs.uiuc.edu/mailman/listinfo/lldb-commits>`_. Reading the
+"commits" list and paying attention to changes being made by others is a good
+way to see what other people are interested in and watching the flow of the
+project as a whole.
+
+We recommend that active developers register an email account with `LLVM
+Bugzilla <http://llvm.org/bugs/>`_ and preferably subscribe to the `llvm-bugs
+<http://lists.cs.uiuc.edu/mailman/listinfo/llvmbugs>`_ email list to keep track
+of bugs and enhancements occurring in LLVM. We really appreciate people who are
+proactive at catching incoming bugs in their components and dealing with them
+promptly.
+
+.. _patch:
+.. _one-off patches:
+
+Making a Patch
+--------------
+
+When making a patch for review, the goal is to make it as easy for the reviewer
+to read it as possible. As such, we recommend that you:
+
+#. Make your patch against the Subversion trunk, not a branch, and not an old
+ version of LLVM. This makes it easy to apply the patch. For information on
+ how to check out SVN trunk, please see the `Getting Started
+ Guide <GettingStarted.html#checkout>`_.
+
+#. Similarly, patches should be submitted soon after they are generated. Old
+ patches may not apply correctly if the underlying code changes between the
+ time the patch was created and the time it is applied.
+
+#. Patches should be made with ``svn diff``, or similar. If you use a
+ different tool, make sure it uses the ``diff -u`` format and that it
+ doesn't contain clutter which makes it hard to read.
+
+#. If you are modifying generated files, such as the top-level ``configure``
+ script, please separate out those changes into a separate patch from the rest
+ of your changes.
+
+When sending a patch to a mailing list, it is a good idea to send it as an
+*attachment* to the message, not embedded into the text of the message. This
+ensures that your mailer will not mangle the patch when it sends it (e.g. by
+making whitespace changes or by wrapping lines).
+
+*For Thunderbird users:* Before submitting a patch, please open *Preferences >
+Advanced > General > Config Editor*, find the key
+``mail.content_disposition_type``, and set its value to ``1``. Without this
+setting, Thunderbird sends your attachment using ``Content-Disposition: inline``
+rather than ``Content-Disposition: attachment``. Apple Mail gamely displays such
+a file inline, making it difficult to work with for reviewers using that
+program.
+
+.. _code review:
+
+Code Reviews
+------------
+
+LLVM has a code review policy. Code review is one way to increase the quality of
+software. We generally follow these policies:
+
+#. All developers are required to have significant changes reviewed before they
+ are committed to the repository.
+
+#. Code reviews are conducted by email, usually on the llvm-commits list.
+
+#. Code can be reviewed either before it is committed or after. We expect major
+ changes to be reviewed before being committed, but smaller changes (or
+ changes where the developer owns the component) can be reviewed after commit.
+
+#. The developer responsible for a code change is also responsible for making
+ all necessary review-related changes.
+
+#. Code review can be an iterative process, which continues until the patch is
+ ready to be committed.
+
+Developers should participate in code reviews as both reviewers and
+reviewees. If someone is kind enough to review your code, you should return the
+favor for someone else. Note that anyone is welcome to review and give feedback
+on a patch, but only people with Subversion write access can approve it.
+
+Code Owners
+-----------
+
+The LLVM Project relies on two features of its process to maintain rapid
+development in addition to the high quality of its source base: the combination
+of code review plus post-commit review for trusted maintainers. Having both is
+a great way for the project to take advantage of the fact that most people do
+the right thing most of the time, and only commit patches without pre-commit
+review when they are confident they are right.
+
+The trick to this is that the project has to guarantee that all patches that are
+committed are reviewed after they go in: you don't want everyone to assume
+someone else will review it, allowing the patch to go unreviewed. To solve this
+problem, we have a notion of an 'owner' for a piece of the code. The sole
+responsibility of a code owner is to ensure that a commit to their area of the
+code is appropriately reviewed, either by themself or by someone else. The
+current code owners are:
+
+* **Evan Cheng**: Code generator and all targets
+
+* **Greg Clayton**: LLDB
+
+* **Doug Gregor**: Clang Frontend Libraries
+
+* **Howard Hinnant**: libc++
+
+* **Anton Korobeynikov**: Exception handling, debug information, and Windows
+ codegen
+
+* **Ted Kremenek**: Clang Static Analyzer
+
+* **Chris Lattner**: Everything not covered by someone else
+
+* **John McCall**: Clang LLVM IR generation
+
+* **Jakob Olesen**: Register allocators and TableGen
+
+* **Duncan Sands**: dragonegg and llvm-gcc 4.2
+
+* **Peter Collingbourne**: libclc
+
+* **Tobias Grosser**: polly
+
+Note that code ownership is completely different than reviewers: anyone can
+review a piece of code, and we welcome code review from anyone who is
+interested. Code owners are the "last line of defense" to guarantee that all
+patches that are committed are actually reviewed.
+
+Being a code owner is a somewhat unglamorous position, but it is incredibly
+important for the ongoing success of the project. Because people get busy,
+interests change, and unexpected things happen, code ownership is purely opt-in,
+and anyone can choose to resign their "title" at any time. For now, we do not
+have an official policy on how one gets elected to be a code owner.
+
+.. _include a testcase:
+
+Test Cases
+----------
+
+Developers are required to create test cases for any bugs fixed and any new
+features added. Some tips for getting your testcase approved:
+
+* All feature and regression test cases are added to the ``llvm/test``
+ directory. The appropriate sub-directory should be selected (see the `Testing
+ Guide <TestingGuide.html>`_ for details).
+
+* Test cases should be written in `LLVM assembly language <LangRef.html>`_
+ unless the feature or regression being tested requires another language
+ (e.g. the bug being fixed or feature being implemented is in the llvm-gcc C++
+ front-end, in which case it must be written in C++).
+
+* Test cases, especially for regressions, should be reduced as much as possible,
+ by `bugpoint <Bugpoint.html>`_ or manually. It is unacceptable to place an
+ entire failing program into ``llvm/test`` as this creates a *time-to-test*
+ burden on all developers. Please keep them short.
+
+Note that llvm/test and clang/test are designed for regression and small feature
+tests only. More extensive test cases (e.g., entire applications, benchmarks,
+etc) should be added to the ``llvm-test`` test suite. The llvm-test suite is
+for coverage (correctness, performance, etc) testing, not feature or regression
+testing.
+
+Quality
+-------
+
+The minimum quality standards that any change must satisfy before being
+committed to the main development branch are:
+
+#. Code must adhere to the `LLVM Coding Standards <CodingStandards.html>`_.
+
+#. Code must compile cleanly (no errors, no warnings) on at least one platform.
+
+#. Bug fixes and new features should `include a testcase`_ so we know if the
+ fix/feature ever regresses in the future.
+
+#. Code must pass the ``llvm/test`` test suite.
+
+#. The code must not cause regressions on a reasonable subset of llvm-test,
+ where "reasonable" depends on the contributor's judgement and the scope of
+ the change (more invasive changes require more testing). A reasonable subset
+ might be something like "``llvm-test/MultiSource/Benchmarks``".
+
+Additionally, the committer is responsible for addressing any problems found in
+the future that the change is responsible for. For example:
+
+* The code should compile cleanly on all supported platforms.
+
+* The changes should not cause any correctness regressions in the ``llvm-test``
+ suite and must not cause any major performance regressions.
+
+* The change set should not cause performance or correctness regressions for the
+ LLVM tools.
+
+* The changes should not cause performance or correctness regressions in code
+ compiled by LLVM on all applicable targets.
+
+* You are expected to address any `Bugzilla bugs <http://llvm.org/bugs/>`_ that
+ result from your change.
+
+We prefer for this to be handled before submission but understand that it isn't
+possible to test all of this for every submission. Our build bots and nightly
+testing infrastructure normally finds these problems. A good rule of thumb is
+to check the nightly testers for regressions the day after your change. Build
+bots will directly email you if a group of commits that included yours caused a
+failure. You are expected to check the build bot messages to see if they are
+your fault and, if so, fix the breakage.
+
+Commits that violate these quality standards (e.g. are very broken) may be
+reverted. This is necessary when the change blocks other developers from making
+progress. The developer is welcome to re-commit the change after the problem has
+been fixed.
+
+Obtaining Commit Access
+-----------------------
+
+We grant commit access to contributors with a track record of submitting high
+quality patches. If you would like commit access, please send an email to
+`Chris <mailto:sabre@nondot.org>`_ with the following information:
+
+#. The user name you want to commit with, e.g. "hacker".
+
+#. The full name and email address you want message to llvm-commits to come
+ from, e.g. "J. Random Hacker <hacker@yoyodyne.com>".
+
+#. A "password hash" of the password you want to use, e.g. "``2ACR96qjUqsyM``".
+ Note that you don't ever tell us what your password is, you just give it to
+ us in an encrypted form. To get this, run "``htpasswd``" (a utility that
+ comes with apache) in crypt mode (often enabled with "``-d``"), or find a web
+ page that will do it for you.
+
+Once you've been granted commit access, you should be able to check out an LLVM
+tree with an SVN URL of "https://username@llvm.org/..." instead of the normal
+anonymous URL of "http://llvm.org/...". The first time you commit you'll have
+to type in your password. Note that you may get a warning from SVN about an
+untrusted key, you can ignore this. To verify that your commit access works,
+please do a test commit (e.g. change a comment or add a blank line). Your first
+commit to a repository may require the autogenerated email to be approved by a
+mailing list. This is normal, and will be done when the mailing list owner has
+time.
+
+If you have recently been granted commit access, these policies apply:
+
+#. You are granted *commit-after-approval* to all parts of LLVM. To get
+ approval, submit a `patch`_ to `llvm-commits
+ <http://lists.cs.uiuc.edu/mailman/listinfo/llvm-commits>`_. When approved
+ you may commit it yourself.</li>
+
+#. You are allowed to commit patches without approval which you think are
+ obvious. This is clearly a subjective decision --- we simply expect you to
+ use good judgement. Examples include: fixing build breakage, reverting
+ obviously broken patches, documentation/comment changes, any other minor
+ changes.
+
+#. You are allowed to commit patches without approval to those portions of LLVM
+ that you have contributed or maintain (i.e., have been assigned
+ responsibility for), with the proviso that such commits must not break the
+ build. This is a "trust but verify" policy and commits of this nature are
+ reviewed after they are committed.
+
+#. Multiple violations of these policies or a single egregious violation may
+ cause commit access to be revoked.
+
+In any case, your changes are still subject to `code review`_ (either before or
+after they are committed, depending on the nature of the change). You are
+encouraged to review other peoples' patches as well, but you aren't required
+to.
+
+.. _discuss the change/gather consensus:
+
+Making a Major Change
+---------------------
+
+When a developer begins a major new project with the aim of contributing it back
+to LLVM, s/he should inform the community with an email to the `llvmdev
+<http://lists.cs.uiuc.edu/mailman/listinfo/llvmdev>`_ email list, to the extent
+possible. The reason for this is to:
+
+#. keep the community informed about future changes to LLVM,
+
+#. avoid duplication of effort by preventing multiple parties working on the
+ same thing and not knowing about it, and
+
+#. ensure that any technical issues around the proposed work are discussed and
+ resolved before any significant work is done.
+
+The design of LLVM is carefully controlled to ensure that all the pieces fit
+together well and are as consistent as possible. If you plan to make a major
+change to the way LLVM works or want to add a major new extension, it is a good
+idea to get consensus with the development community before you start working on
+it.
+
+Once the design of the new feature is finalized, the work itself should be done
+as a series of `incremental changes`_, not as a long-term development branch.
+
+.. _incremental changes:
+
+Incremental Development
+-----------------------
+
+In the LLVM project, we do all significant changes as a series of incremental
+patches. We have a strong dislike for huge changes or long-term development
+branches. Long-term development branches have a number of drawbacks:
+
+#. Branches must have mainline merged into them periodically. If the branch
+ development and mainline development occur in the same pieces of code,
+ resolving merge conflicts can take a lot of time.
+
+#. Other people in the community tend to ignore work on branches.
+
+#. Huge changes (produced when a branch is merged back onto mainline) are
+ extremely difficult to `code review`_.
+
+#. Branches are not routinely tested by our nightly tester infrastructure.
+
+#. 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.
+
+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:
+
+* 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.
+
+* 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.
+
+* 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.
+
+* 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.
+
+* 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.
+
+If you are interested in making a large change, and this scares you, please make
+sure to first `discuss the change/gather consensus`_ then ask about the best way
+to go about making the change.
+
+Attribution of Changes
+----------------------
+
+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.
+
+Overall, please do not add contributor names to the source code.
+
+.. _copyright, license, and patent policies:
+
+Copyright, License, and Patents
+===============================
+
+.. note::
+
+ This section deals with legal matters but does not provide legal advice. We
+ are not lawyers --- please seek legal counsel from an attorney.
+
+This section addresses the issues of copyright, license and patents for the LLVM
+project. The copyright 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
+`University of Illinois/NCSA Open Source License
+<http://www.opensource.org/licenses/UoI-NCSA.php>`_ (with portions dual licensed
+under the `MIT License <http://www.opensource.org/licenses/mit-license.php>`_,
+see below). As contributor to the LLVM project, you agree to allow any
+contributions to the project to licensed under these terms.
+
+Copyright
+---------
+
+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 `LLVM
+License`_.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+.. _LLVM License:
+
+License
+-------
+
+We intend to keep LLVM perpetually open source and to use a liberal open source
+license. **As a contributor to the project, you agree that any contributions be
+licensed under the terms of the corresponding subproject.** All of the code in
+LLVM is available under the `University of Illinois/NCSA Open Source License
+<http://www.opensource.org/licenses/UoI-NCSA.php>`_, which boils down to
+this:
+
+* You can freely distribute LLVM.
+* You must retain the copyright notice if you redistribute LLVM.
+* Binaries derived from LLVM must reproduce the copyright notice (e.g. in an
+ included readme file).
+* You can't use our names to promote your LLVM derived products.
+* There's no warranty on LLVM at all.
+
+We believe this fosters the widest adoption of LLVM because it **allows
+commercial products to be derived from LLVM** 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
+`License <http://www.opensource.org/licenses/UoI-NCSA.php>`_ if further
+clarification is needed.
+
+In addition to the UIUC license, the runtime library components of LLVM
+(**compiler_rt, libc++, and libclc**) are also licensed under the `MIT License
+<http://www.opensource.org/licenses/mit-license.php>`_, 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.
+
+Note that the LLVM Project does distribute llvm-gcc and dragonegg, **which are
+GPL.** 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 **any code linked into llvm-gcc and distributed to others may be subject to
+the viral aspects of the GPL** (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 GPL-containing subprojects are kept in separate SVN repositories whose
+LICENSE.txt files specifically indicate that they contain GPL code.
+
+We have no plans to change the license of LLVM. If you have questions or
+comments about the license, please contact the `LLVM Developer's Mailing
+List <mailto:llvmdev@cs.uiuc.edu>`_.
+
+Patents
+-------
+
+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).
+
+When contributing code, we expect contributors to notify us of any potential for
+patent-related trouble with their changes (including from third parties). 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 `oversight group <mailto:llvm-oversight@cs.uiuc.edu>`_ for more
+details.