Send all patches and "git request-pull"-formatted emails to our
self-hosting inbox at meta@public-inbox.org
It is archived at: https://public-inbox.org/meta/
-and http://hjrcffqmbrq6wope.onion/meta/ (using Tor)
+and http://4uok3hntl7oi7b4uf4rtfwefqeexfzil2w6kgk2jn5z2f764irre7byd.onion/meta/ (using Tor)
Contributions are email-driven, just like contributing to git
itself or the Linux kernel; however anonymous and pseudonymous
Only depend on Free Software packages which exist in the "main"
section of Debian "stable" distribution. That is Debian 9.x
("stretch") as of this writing, but "oldstable" (8.x, "jessie")
-remains supported for v1 repositories.
+remains supported for v1 inboxes.
In general, we favor mature and well-tested old things rather than
the shiny new.
Avoid relying on compiled modules too much. Even if it is Free,
compiled code makes packages more expensive to audit, build,
distribute and verify. public-inbox itself will only be implemented
-in scripting languages (currently Perl 5).
+in scripting languages (currently Perl 5) and optional
+Just-Ahead-of-Time-compiled C (via Inline::C)
+
+Do not recurse on user-supplied data. Neither Perl or C handle
+deep recursion gracefully. See lib/PublicInbox/SearchThread.pm
+and lib/PublicInbox/MsgIter.pm for examples of non-recursive
+alternatives to previously-recursive algorithms.
Performance should be reasonably good for server administrators, too,
and we will sacrifice features to achieve predictable performance.
See design_www.txt and design_notes.txt in the Documentation/
directory for design decisions made during development.
-For now, one may optionally subscribe to the mailing list by
-sending an email to: meta+subscribe@public-inbox.org
-(and confirming). However, reading over the mailing list is
-the least reliable method of reading a public-inbox.
+See Documentation/technical/ in the source tree for more details
+on specific topics, in particular data_structures.txt
+
+Optional packages for testing and development
+---------------------------------------------
+
+Optional packages testing and development:
+
+- Plack::Test deb: libplack-test-perl
+ pkg: p5-Plack
+ rpm: perl-Plack-Test
+
+- Plack::Test::ExternalServer deb: libplack-test-externalserver-perl
+ pkg: p5-Plack-Test-ExternalServer
+
+- Test::Simple deb: perl-modules-5.$MINOR
+ pkg: perl5
+ rpm: perl-Test-Simple
+
+- XML::TreePP deb: libxml-treepp-perl
+ pkg: p5-XML-TreePP
+ rpm: perl-XML-TreePP
+
+Email::MIME is optional as of public-inbox v1.5.0 but still
+used for maintainer comparison tests:
+
+* Email::MIME deb: libemail-mime-perl
+ pkg: p5-Email-MIME
+ rpm: perl-Email-MIME
+
+Faster tests
+------------
+
+The `make test' target provided by MakeMaker does not run in
+parallel. Our `make check' target supports parallel runs, and
+it also creates a `.prove' file to optimize `make check-run'.
+
+The prove(1) command (distributed with Perl) may also be used
+for finer-grained testing: prove -bvw t/foo.t
+
+If using a make(1) (e.g. GNU make) with `include' support, the
+`config.mak' Makefile snippet can be used to set environment
+variables such as PERL_INLINE_DIRECTORY and TMPDIR.
+
+With PERL_INLINE_DIRECTORY set to enable Inline::C support and
+TMPDIR pointed to a tmpfs(5) mount, `make check-run' takes 6-10s
+(load-dependent) on a busy workstation built in 2010.
+
+Perl notes
+----------
+
+* \w, \s, \d character classes all match Unicode characters;
+ so write out class ranges (e.g "[0-9]") if you only intend to
+ match ASCII. Do not use the "/a" (ASCII) modifier, that requires
+ Perl 5.14 and we're only depending on 5.10.1 at the moment.