radare2/DEVELOPERS

DEVELOPERS
==========

This file aims to describe an introduction for developers to work
on the code base of radare2 project.

CODE STYLE
----------
In order to contribute with patches or plugins we encourage you to
use the same coding style as the rest of the code base.

You may find some notes on this topic in doc/syntax

MODULES
-------
The radare2 code base is modularized into different libraries that are
found in libr/ directory. The binr/ directory contains the programs
that use the libraries.

It is possible to generate PIC/nonPIC builds of the libraries and also
to create a single static library, so you can use a single library
archive (.a) to link your programs and get your programs using radare
framework libraries without depending on them.

DEPENDENCIES
------------
radare can be built without any special dependency. It just requires
a C compiler, a GNU make and a unix-like system.

CROSSCOMPILATION
----------------
The instructions to crosscompile r2 to Windows are in doc/windows

You may find other documents in doc/ explaining how to build it on iOS,
linux-arm and others, but the procedure is like this:

 - define CC
 - use a different compiler profile with --with-compiler
 - use a different OS with --with-ostype
 - type make
 - install in DESTDIR

SOURCE REPOSITORY
-----------------
The source of radare can be found in two mercurial repositories.

   hg clone http://radare.org/hg/radare2

or in the mirror (not always in sync)

   hg clone http://hg.youterm.com/radare2

To get an up to date copy of the repository you should perform the
following steps:

   hg pull -u

If you have conflicts in your local copy it's because you have modified
files which are conflicting with the incomming patchsets. To get a clean
source directory type the following command:

   hg revert -a ; hg up

There's also an hg extension that comes by default and must be enabled
in .hgrc which is called 'purge' and works pretty better than the above
solution:

   hg purge

COMPILATION
-----------
Inter-module rebuild dependencies are not handled automatically and
require human interaction to recompile the affected modules.

This is a common issue and can end up having outdated libraries trying
to use deprecated structures which may result into segfaults.

You have to make clean on the affected modules or just, if you are not
sure enought that everything is ok just make clean the whole project.

If you want to accelerate the build process after full make cleans
you should use ccache in this way:

  export CC="ccache gcc"

INSTALLATION
------------
Developers use to modify the code, type make and then try.

radare2 have a specific makefile target that allows you to install
system wide but using symlinks instead of hard copies.

This kind of installation is really helpful if you do lot of changes
in the code for various reasons.

  - only one install is required across multiple builds
  - installation time is much faster

REPORTING BUGS
--------------
If you notice any missfeature, issue, error, problem or you just
don't know how to do something which is supossed to be covered
by this framework.

You should report it in our web page in the 'bugs' section.

   http://www.radare.org/

Otherwise, if you are looking for some more feedback I will
encourage you to send an email to any of the emails enumerated
in the AUTHORS file.

Anyway, if you want to get even more feedback and discuss this
in a public place we have a mailing list where many other
people may help in order to find a solution.

CONTRIBUTING WITH PATCHES
-------------------------
All the development happens in the mercurial repository. It is
good that all patches can be applied against the hg tip (last
commit in head repository).

I can get patches in unidiff format like this:

  hg diff > p

If you are going to do a set of patches that may conflict with
tip it is recommended to create a branch from tip, do your
work and then export all those patchsets like this:

  hg export -o patch.hg tip

TODO: explain binary patchsets and how to dump a full branch

HOW TO RELEASE 
--------------

 - Set RELEASE=1 in global.mk and r2-bindings/config.mk.acr
 - Use bsdtar from libarchive package. GNU tar is broken

  == RADARE2
   - bump revision
   - ./configure
   - make dist

  == R2-BINDINGS
   - ./configure --enable-devel
   - make
   - make dist


--pancake