Table of contents

• Introduction
• Servers
  • Development sources and bug reports
  • Distributions
• Adding or removing files
• Making distributions
  • Preparing the source code
  • Testing
    • Testing on Windows
  • Finishing up
    • Tester or beta distributions
    • Public releases
    • After releasing

For other information, see the Ghostscript overview and the instructions on how to build Ghostscript.

Introduction

This document is a rough set of internal notes that Aladdin Enterprises uses to manage the process of making new Ghostscript releases. As time goes on, it will become a more suitable document for others wishing to prepare releases for distribution. Although the Aladdin Free Public License allows anyone to prepare and distribute releases, this document is really meant only for developers working closely with Aladdin.

This document refers to many script files that are not currently part of the Ghostscript distribution. In the course of time, these scripts will become part of the distribution, probably in a new subdirectory.

File names below that don't include an explicit subdirectory name are in the src subdirectory.

If you do plan to make your own distribution, please be aware of some items you will want to change.

• If you make any significant changes, please edit gscdef.c to change GS_PRODUCTFAMILY and GS_PRODUCT from "Aladdin Ghostscript" to something else, in order to avoid confusion with Aladdin's releases.
• In the same file, you may also want to edit GS_COPYRIGHT to add your own copyright notice (although you must not remove Aladdin's notice).
• You will almost certainly want to edit version.mak to change the revision date, GS_REVISIONDATE.
• If you want to change the version number, you must change it in both version.mak (GS_VERSION_*) and lib/gs_init.ps (the integer on a line by itself near the beginning of the file).

Servers

The Aladdin Ghostscript files are maintained on sites accessible to the public. One specific site hosts the active CVS repository for code, data, and documentation, and the bug report data base; several sites offer distributions with version numbers, intended for wider distribution.

Development sources and bug reports

The development site for Aladdin Ghostscript is SourceForge (http://sourceforge.net). Please read the SourceForge Aladdin Ghostscript home page (http://ghostscript.sourceforge.net) first. CVS access information is available at http://sourceforge.net/cvs/?group_id=1897.

Distributions

Both public and tester releases are available from

http://sourceforge.net/project/filelist.php?group_id=1897

Public (tested) releases are distributed from

ftp://ftp.cs.wisc.edu/ghost/aladdin/

Tester releases are distributed from

ftp://ftp.cs.wisc.edu/ghost/aladdin/test/
ftp://www.aladdin.com/ghost/aladdin/test/

Adding or removing files

When adding or removing files, don't forget to invoke cvs add or cvs rm.

When adding or removing files other than .c or .h: If the files are included in the fileset (i.e., not just support files), check the install list in unixinst.mak.

When adding .c files, update the relevant .mak file (usually devs.mak, int.mak, or lib.mak).

When adding operators, update doc/Language.htm if desired.

When adding .h files, add a _h definition in the appropriate .mak file.

When adding or changing fonts, update Fontmap.GS, fonts.mak, and possibly the compiled fonts in gs.mak and the examples in doc/Fonts.htm.

When adding or changing filters, update doc/Language.htm.

When adding .ps files, update doc/Psfiles.htm.

Making distributions

This document only discusses source distributions. Source distributions currently can only be made on Linux systems (but it probably wouldn't take much work to support other Unix systems). Ghostscript as distributed also often includes Windows executables or other packages for the Windows environment, but Aladdin does not produce these, and this document does not discuss them. For more information about this topic, please contact bug-gswin@aladdin.com or gsview@ghostgum.com.au.

To make a source distribution, you will need the following tools:

cvs2hist.py (Python script -- anywhere in the path)
cvs2hist (link to cvs2hist.py, ibid.)
../bin/precheck.tcl (Tcl script)
master/pre (Tcl script)
master/pre.chk (data file)
master/gsmake.tcl (Tcl script)
master/gsmake (link to gsmake.tcl)
master/makeset.tcl (Tcl script)
master/makehist (link to makeset.tcl)
master/makefonts (ibid.)
master/maketars (ibid.)
master/makemaster (ibid.)
master/smoke.ps (PostScript file)
data/*/*.ps (PostScript files)
beta.msg

Make sure the release date and version number are up to date in version.mak, lib/gs_init.ps, and doc/News.htm.

Preparing the source code

Check in gscdef.c that the definition of GS_PRODUCT includes the appropriate one of "TESTER RELEASE", "BETA RELEASE", or neither.

Check for patched configuration parameters, #define TESTs, version/date inconsistencies, and mismatches between the working directory and the CVS repository by running:

master/pre

This program compares the result of various greps against a check file, writing the results of grep on one output file and the differences from the check file on another. See the source code of master/pre for the default file names. The important one is the check file, master/pre.chk. pre also verifies that the right information is in the following places:

• version number in man/*.1, doc/*.htm, version.mak, doc/gs-vms.hlp, lib/gs_init.ps
• revision date in man/*.1, doc/*.htm, version.mak, doc/gs-vms.hlp
• copyright year (if necessary) in gscdef.c

If necessary, run

master/pre update

to update the version and revision date in the doc files, and then run

master/pre

again.

Check the consistency of the source code with the makefiles by running:

master/gsmake check

Edit the makefile (presumably unix-gcc.mak) to set

FEATURE_DEVS=$(FEATURE_DEVS_ALL)
COMPILE_INITS=1

This will help catch compilation problems.

Run

rm obj/*
make -j2 >& t.log

and look for warnings and errors in the log file.

Do a smoke test:

bin/gs @b master/smoke.ps
export TEMP=/gs/tmp
bin/gs @b -sDEVICE=bitcmyk -sOutputFile=/dev/null -r600 -dMaxBitmap=1000000\
  master/smoke.ps

Undo the FEATURE_DEVS and COMPILE_INITS edits.

Run

cvs commit

to ensure the repository is up to date.

Execute

cvs2hist -v #.#[#] > doc/Changes.htm

This consolidates all the CVS logs since the previous release in a readable format.

Run

master/makehist

This updates doc/History#.htm from doc/News.htm and doc/Changes.htm. Then run

cvs commit

again.

Make the source archives with

master/maketars

This creates the files

ghostscript-#.##.tar.gz (main archive)
ghostscript-#.##.tar.bz2 (main archive)
ghostscript-#.##gnu.tar.gz (GPL'ed files)

Testing

Unpack the main archive in a clean directory. Prepare for building:

ln -s src/unix-gcc.mak makefile;\
ln -s /gs/jpeg jpeg; ln -s /gs/libpng libpng; ln -s /gs/zlib zlib

Do a full build and smoke test (in a separate window):

unset GS_LIB
bin/gs -Ilib -I/gs/fonts -dNOPAUSE -dBATCH /gs/master/smoke.ps | tee t
export TEMP=/gs/tmp
bin/gs -Ilib -I/gs/fonts -dNOPAUSE -dBATCH -sDEVICE=bitcmyk\
  -sOutputFile=/dev/null -r600 -dMaxBitmap=1000000 /gs/master/smoke.ps | tee t

This reads files named

/gs/data/ps/*.ps
/gs/data/psl2/*.ps
/gs/data/psl3/*.ps
/gs/data/test/*.ps

(Edit smoke.ps ad lib to use other test sets.) Watch for crashes, unusual error messages, or anomalous displayed output. If there are any problems, start over from the beginning of the process.

Testing on Windows

For Windows testing, you will need, in addition to the files listed under "Source distributions" above:

master/makewin (link to makeset.tcl)

The following procedures are very Aladdin-specific; they rely on a large number of MS-DOS batch scripts that are not discussed here.

Mount the Windows partition on /c, and create the /c/work directory if needed.

Make the zip archive of all files needed for a Windows build, and copy it to the Windows partition:

master/makewin
cp gs###.zip /c/work

Boot into Windows. Unpack the archive:

cd \work
unzip -oq gs###.zip
gs###

The gs###.bat script creates some necessary directories, sets up PATH and GS_LIB for testing, and makes the gs#.#[#] directory current.

Build with the Borland compiler:

config bcwin32
copy /y /b ..\gs\makefile
erase obj\*.*
make > bc.log

Smoke test the executables (both gswin32 and gswin32c), as described above for source distributions. Then build with the Microsoft compiler:

config msvc32
copy /y /b ..\gs\makefile
erase obj\*.*
nmake > msvc.log

Smoke test these executables too.

Building with the Watcom compiler doesn't work, because the wmake or wmakel program runs out of memory. However, if it did work, this is how to do it:

config watcw32
copy /y /b ..\gs\makefile
erase obj\*.*
wmake -u > watc.log

Boot back into Linux. If testing in Windows revealed problems, edit the source files as necessary, and go back to "Preparing the source code."

Finishing up

If you are maintaining local master copies, execute

master/makemaster

This creates master/### if necessary, and moves the archives to it.

Tag the source files with the release number by executing

cvs tag gs#_#[#]

If ansi2knr.c has changed, put it on ftp://ftp.cs.wisc.edu/ghost/ansi2knr.c.

If doc/C-style.htm has changed, put it on ftp://ftp.cs.wisc.edu/ghost/aladdin/C-style.htm.

Tester or beta distributions

Do the steps for distributions in general.

Upload ghostscript-#.##.tar.* to ftp://ftp.cs.wisc.edu/ghost/aladdin/test.

Copy the same files from there to ftp://www.aladdin.com/pub/ftp/ghost/aladdin/test.

Construct the e-mail announcement by editing beta.msg; include the News section for this release. Mail using:

To: gs-test

Public releases

Update the title (current version #), first heading (previous version #), and "new features" and "known problems" lists in doc/Current.htm.

Do the steps for distributions in general.

E-mail the release announcement using:

To: gs-announce

Edit the Web pages on the Wisconsin server to reflect the new release.

After releasing

Edit doc/News.htm to remove all content.

Ghostscript version 6.01, 16 March 2000