PDL Development

Since April 2009 (after version 2.4.4) the PDL source distribution is in a publicly accessible Git repository. The whole PDL project is hosted at SourceForge. There you also find the PDL Bug database and the PDL patch manager which non-developers should use to submit patches for PDL.

The easiest way to get your changes into the most recent version of PDL is to become a developer. This status will give you write access to the Git repository. To become a developer you should register as a user with SourceForge and contact one of the project admins.

Hints for developers

  1. Before committing a change to the repository you should update

    • CHANGES file with a description of the change made
    • MANIFEST (using make manifest), MANIFEST.SKIP, TODO files if applicable.

  2. Remember to include POD documentation for any functions you add to the distribution.

    • See Basic/Core/Core.pm for an example of including POD documentation in .pm files.
    • See Basic/Core/Primitive/Primitive.pd for an example of including POD documentation in PDL .pd files.
    • read the documentation in PDL::Doc for a detailed description of the PDL documentation conventions

  3. Make sure you add a test case in the 't' directory for any significant additional capability you add to the PDL package.

  4. Don't commit before you successfully built and passed make test. But then again, don't keep your changes private for too long to avoid conflicts with other developers.

  5. Bugs reported on the list should be entered into the bug database and bugs closed when a patch has been committed as a fix. (Primary responsibility for this task is the pumpking, but other devels should be able to help.)

Using Git

Not everybody is a Git expert when he becomes a developer. There are various Git documents available online. Good places to start are the Git documentation and the guide to Git on Sourceforge. Check the FAQ for a guide to the most basic git commands.
This page was written by Robert Schwebel and various other pdl-porters. Please send bugs and ideas for this web page to pdl-porters@jach.hawaii.edu.
Last modified: Saturday, 24-Oct-2009 21:35:31 UTC

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