How to prepare an Aladdin Ghostscript release

Table of contents

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.

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.

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 tested and tester releases are available from

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

Tested public releases are also distributed from

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

Tester releases are also distributed from

ftp://ftp.cs.wisc.edu/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 executables or other packages for the Windows and MacOS environment, but Aladdin does not produce these, and this document does not discuss them. For more information about Windows packages, please contact bug-gswin@aladdin.com; for more information about MacOS packages; please contact mac-gs@aladdin.com.

To make a source distribution, you will need the scripts and data files in the toolbin/ directory. You will probably find it convenient to include this directory in the PATH, but the instructions below don't assume that you have done this. To run the scripts, you will need reasonably current versions of Tcl, freely available from Scriptics (http://www.scriptics.com), and Python, freely available from http://www.python.org

The instructions below also refer to some files that are deliberately omitted from the public distribution, because they are copyrighted by their authors and not freely redistributable. You will need to provide similar files for your environment.

data/*/*.ps (PostScript files) - needed for smoke testing
beta.msg - the announcement message for the release

Preparing the source code

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

Update the number of the highest closed bug, and the list of open bugs, in doc/News.htm.

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:

toolbin/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 toolbin/pre for the default file names. The important one is the check file, toolbin/pre.chk. pre also verifies that the right information is in the following places:

If necessary, run

toolbin/pre update

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

toolbin/pre

again.

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

toolbin/gsmake check

Testing

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 in a separate window, replacing /gs with the name of the development root directory if necessary:

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

Undo the FEATURE_DEVS and COMPILE_INITS edits.

Run

cvs commit

to ensure the repository is up to date.

Execute

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

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

Run

toolbin/makehist

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

cvs commit

again to check in the Changes and history files.

Make the source archives with

toolbin/maketars

This creates the files

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

Testing on Windows

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

toolbin/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:

toolbin/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

toolbin/makemaster

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

Tag the source files with the release number by executing

cvs tag gs#_#[#]
Upload and post ghostscript-#.##.tar.* to SourceForge using the "File Release" facility in the Aladdin Ghostscript project.

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.

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 the content.


Copyright © 1999, 2000 Aladdin Enterprises. All rights reserved.

This file is part of Aladdin Ghostscript. See the Aladdin Free Public License (the "License") for full details of the terms of using, copying, modifying, and redistributing Aladdin Ghostscript.

Ghostscript version 6.20, 6 April 2000