This README.dev file describes the development environment.

  Copyright (C) 2002-2026 Free Software Foundation, Inc.

  Copying and distribution of this file, with or without modification,
  are permitted in any medium without royalty provided the copyright
  notice and this notice are preserved.

The development sources are available through git  at Savannah:

  https://savannah.gnu.org/git/?group=hello


Autotools
---------

This distribution uses whatever versions of Automake, Autoconf and
Gettext are listed in NEWS; usually the latest ones released.  If you
are getting the sources from git (or change configure.ac), you'll
need to have these tools installed to (re)build.  You'll also need
help2man.  All of these programs are available from
ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu.


Building
--------

After getting the git sources, and installing the tools above, you
can run

  ./bootstrap

to do a fresh build.  After that first time, running make should suffice.

When modifying the sources, or making a distribution, more is needed, as
follows:


Gnulib
------

This distribution also uses Gnulib (https://www.gnu.org/software/gnulib)
to share common files, stored as a submodule in git.


Gettext
-------

When updating gettext, besides the normal installation on the system, it
is necessary to run gettextize -f in this hierarchy to update the po/
infrastructure.  After doing so, rerun gnulib-tool --import since
otherwise older files will have been imported.  See the Gnulib manual
for more information.