6.5 Submitting Patches

Development is done using the Git distributed version control system. Thus, access to the repository is not strictly necessary. We welcome contributions in the form of patches as produced by git format-patch sent to the guile-user@gnu.org mailing list.

Please write commit logs in the ChangeLog format (see Change Logs in GNU Coding Standards); you can check the commit history for examples.

6.5.1 Reporting Bugs

Encountering a problem or bug can be very frustrating for you as a user or potential contributor. For us as Emacsy maintainers, the preferred bug report includes a beautiful and tested patch that we can integrate without any effort.

However, please don’t let our preference stop you from reporting a bug. There’s one thing much worse for us than getting a bug report without a patch: Reading a complaint or rant online about your frustrations and how our work sucks, without having heard directly what you experienced.

So if you report a problem, will it be fixed? And when? The most honest answer is: It depends. Let’s curry that informationless honesty with a more helpful and more blunt reminder of a mantra of free software:

Q:

When will it be finished?

A:

It will be ready sooner if you help.

Join us on #guile on the Freenode IRC network or on guile-user@gnu.org to share your experience—good or bad.

Please send bug reports with full details to guile-user@gnu.org.