HACKING

Rules and Guidelines:
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1. All source contributors must use the same indentation procedure.
   Elisp code for having Emacs or XEmacs do this is in CVS at
   mallet/.emacs.mallet.
   <We need to generate a textual description of the indentation style
    so non-emacs users can match it.>

2. Obey Java and MALLET naming and style conventions.
   Use standard Java capitalization conventions.
   Follow the naming patterns used in MALLET so far.
   Do not use "ASCII art" (rows of asterisks, etc) to delimit
    comments or sections---simply use whitespace.
   <We need to specify these more exactly.>

3. Code checked into the CVS repository should always compile,
   and all JUnit tests should pass.  
   <We need automated ways to make this easier to check.>


To check out the MALLET code and compile it:
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1. Have a CVS pserver account on mallet.cs.umass.edu.

2. Log in to the CVS server with 
   $ cvs -d :pserver:yourlogin@mallet.cs.umass.edu:/cvsroot login
   (replacing yourlogin with your login id) and enter your password

3. Check out the MALLET code with
   $ cvs -d :pserver:yourlogin@mallet.cs.umass.edu:/cvsroot checkout mallet

4. Have Java 1.4 and GNU make in your PATH.

5. Enter the directory and compile the source:
   $ cd mallet
   $ make

   This last step is likely to fail since besides doing the core libraries
   of Mallet, it will try to compile the user directories and there is no
   guarantee these will compile. In that case use:

   $ make mallet-base

To check in code changes:
========================================================

1. Check in and use change log comments as follows

   $ cvs commit -m 'Message describing change' YourChangedFile.java
   $ cvs add YourNewFile.java ; cvs commit -m '' YourNewFile.java



Questions?  Send email to mccallum@cs.umass.edu.
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