clang/www/get_involved.html

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  16 <h1>Getting Involved with the Clang Project</h1>
  17
  18 <p>Once you have <a href="get_started.html">checked out and built</a> clang and
  19 played around with it, you might be wondering what you can do to make it better
  20 and contribute to its development.  Alternatively, maybe you just want to follow
  21 the development of the project to see it progress.
  22 </p>
  23
  24 <h2>Contribute</h2>
  25
  26 See the <a href="hacking.html">hacking</a> document for information on how
  27 to author patches.
  28
  29 <h2>Follow what's going on</h2>
  30
  31 <p>Clang is a subproject of the <a href="https://llvm.org">LLVM Project</a>
  32 and has a Discourse forum and mailing list:</p>
  33
  34 <ul>
  35 <li><a href="https://lists.llvm.org/mailman/listinfo/cfe-commits">cfe-commits
  36 </a> - This list is for patch submission/discussion.</li>
  37
  38 <li><a href="https://discourse.llvm.org/c/clang/6">Clang Frontend Discourse forum</a> -
  39 This forum is for everything else Clang related (questions and answers, design
  40 discussions, etc).</li>
  41
  42 </ul>
  43
  44 <p>The most common way to talk with other developers on the project is through
  45 the <a href="https://discourse.llvm.org/c/clang/6">Clang Frontend Discourse forum
  46 </a>.  The clang forum is a very friendly place and we welcome
  47 newcomers.  In addition to the forum, a significant amount of design
  48 discussion takes place on the <a
  49 href="https://lists.llvm.org/mailman/listinfo/cfe-commits">cfe-commits mailing
  50 list</a>.  All of these lists have archives, so you can browse through previous
  51 discussions or follow the list development on the web if you prefer.</p>
  52
  53 <p>If you're looking for something to work on, check out our <a
  54 href="OpenProjects.html">Open Projects</a> page or look through the <a
  55 href="https://github.com/llvm/llvm-project/issues/">LLVM bug tracker</a>.</p>
  56
  57 <h2 id="criteria">Contributing Extensions to Clang</h2>
  58
  59 <p>Clang is designed to support experimentation,
  60 allowing programmers to easily extend the compiler to support great
  61 new language features and tools. At some point, the authors of these
  62 extensions may propose that the extensions become a part of Clang
  63 itself, to benefit the whole Clang community. However, extensions
  64 (particularly language extensions) have long-term maintenance costs
  65 for Clang. The benefits of the extension need to be evaluated against
  66 these costs. The Clang project uses the following criteria for this
  67 evaluation:</p>
  68
  69 <ol>
  70   <li>Evidence of a significant user community: This is based on a number of
  71   factors, including an existing user community, the perceived likelihood that
  72   users would adopt such a feature if it were available, and any secondary
  73   effects that come from, e.g., a library adopting the feature and providing
  74   benefits to its users.</li>
  75
  76   <li>A specific need to reside within the Clang tree: There are some extensions
  77   that would be better expressed as a separate tool, and should remain as
  78   separate tools even if they end up being hosted as part of the LLVM umbrella
  79   project.</li>
  80
  81   <li>A specification: The specification must be sufficient to understand the
  82   design of the feature as well as interpret the meaning of specific examples.
  83   The specification should be detailed enough that another compiler vendor
  84   could implement the feature.</li>
  85
  86   <li>Representation within the appropriate governing organization: For
  87   extensions to a language governed by a standards committee (C, C++, OpenCL),
  88   the extension itself must have an active proposal and proponent within that
  89   committee and have a reasonable chance of acceptance. Clang should drive the
  90   standard, not diverge from it. This criterion does not apply to all
  91   extensions, since some extensions fall outside of the realm of the standards
  92   bodies.</li>
  93
  94   <li>A long-term support plan: increasingly large or complex extensions to
  95   Clang need matching commitments to supporting them over time, including
  96   improving their implementation and specification as Clang evolves. The
  97   capacity of the contributor to make that commitment is as important as the
  98   commitment itself.</li>
  99
 100   <li>A high-quality implementation: The implementation must fit well into
 101   Clang's architecture, follow LLVM's coding conventions, and meet Clang's
 102   quality standards, including diagnostics and complete AST
 103   representations. This is particularly important for language extensions,
 104   because users will learn how those extensions work through the behavior of the
 105   compiler.</li>
 106
 107   <li>A test suite: Extensive testing is crucial to ensure that the language
 108   extension is not broken by ongoing maintenance in Clang. The test suite
 109   should be complete enough that another compiler vendor could conceivably
 110   validate their implementation of the feature against it.</li>
 111 </ol>
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