libvirt/README-hacking

-*- outline -*-

These notes intend to help people working on the checked-out sources.
These requirements do not apply when building from a distribution tarball.
See also docs/hacking.html (after building libvirt using the information
included in this file) for more detailed contribution guidelines.

* Requirements

We've opted to keep only the highest-level sources in the GIT repository.
This eases our maintenance burden, (fewer merges etc.), but imposes more
requirements on anyone wishing to build from the just-checked-out sources.
Note the requirements to build the released archive are much less and
are just the requirements of the standard configure && make procedure.
Specific development tools and versions will be checked for and listed by
the bootstrap script.

Valgrind <http://valgrind.org/> is also highly recommended, if
Valgrind supports your architecture.

While building from a just-cloned source tree may require installing a
few prerequisites, later, a plain `git pull && make' should be sufficient.

* First GIT checkout

You can get a copy of the source repository like this:

        $ git clone https://libvirt.org/git/libvirt.git
        $ cd libvirt

As an optional step, if you already have a copy of the gnulib git
repository on your hard drive, then you can use it as a reference to
reduce download time and disk space requirements:

        $ export GNULIB_SRCDIR=/path/to/gnulib

We require to have the build directory different than the source directory:

        $ mkdir build && cd build

The next step is to get all required pieces from gnulib,
to run autoreconf, and to invoke ../autogen.sh:

        $ ../autogen.sh

And there you are!  Just

        $ make
        $ make check

At this point, there should be no difference between your local copy,
and the GIT master copy:

        $ cd ..
        $ git diff

should output no difference.

Enjoy!

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