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To Think About When Contributing Source Code

 This document is intended to offer some guidelines that can be useful to keep

 in mind when you decide to write a contribution to the project. This concerns

 This document is intended to offer some simple guidelines that can be useful

 to keep in mind when you decide to contribute to the project. This concerns

 new features as well as corrections to existing flaws or bugs.

Join the Community

 Skip over to http://curl.haxx.se/mail/ and join the appropriate mailing

 list(s).  Read up on details before you post questions. Read this file before

 you start sending patches!

 you start sending patches! We prefer patches and discussions being held on

 the mailing list(s), not sent to individuals.

The License Issue

What To Read

 Source code, the man pages, the INTERALS document, the TODO, the most recent

 Source code, the man pages, the INTERNALS document, the TODO, the most recent

 CHANGES. Just lurking on the libcurl mailing list is gonna give you a lot of

 insights on what's going on right now.

 insights on what's going on right now. Asking there is a good idea too.

Naming

 names. It doesn't necessarily have to mean that you should use the same as in

 other places of the code, just that the names should be logical,

 understandable and be named according to what they're used for. File-local

 functions should be made static.

 functions should be made static. We like lower case names.

 See the INTERNALS document on how we name non-exported library-global symbols.

Indenting

 Please try using the same indenting levels and bracing method as all the

 other code already does. It makes the source code a lot easier to follow if

 all of it is written using the same style. We don't ask you to like it, we

 just ask you to follow the tradition! ;-)

 just ask you to follow the tradition! ;-) This mainly means: 2-level indents,

 using spaces only (no tabs) and having the opening brace ({) on the same line

 as the if() or while().

Commenting

 Comment your source code extensively. Commented code is quality code and

 enables future modifications much more. Uncommented code much more risk being

 Comment your source code extensively using C comments (/* comment */), do not

 use C++ comments (// this style). Commented code is quality code and enables

 future modifications much more. Uncommented code much more risk being

 completely replaced when someone wants to extend things, since other persons'

 source code can get quite hard to read.

 functionality, try writing it in a new source file. If you fix bugs, try to

 fix one bug at a time and send them as separate patches.

Platform Dependent Code

 Use #ifdef HAVE_FEATURE to do conditional code. We avoid checking for

 particular operting systems or hardware in the #ifdef lines. The HAVE_FEATURE

 shall be generated by the configure script for unix-like systems and they are

 hard-coded in the config-[system].h files for the others.

Separate Patches Doing Different Things

 It is annoying when you get a huge patch from someone that is said to fix 511

 small description of your fix or your new features with every contribution so

 that it can be swiftly added to the package documentation.

 The documentation is always made in man pages (nroff formatted) or plain

 ASCII files. All HTML files on the web site and in the release archives are

 generated from the nroff/ASCII versions.

Write Access to CVS Repository

 If you are a frequent contributor, or have another good reason, you can of