This file is not intended for intelligent people with modern attitudes. It asks for your help. ;-)

Enhancing the MiNTLib is a task to big for one single person. There are many ways for you to lend a helping hand though. Remember that enhancements or bug fixes for the MiNTLib will improve the FreeMiNT system in general as there are only very few programs that do not use the MiNTLib.

Bug reports

Bug reports are always welcome. Don't be afraid to be called pedantic if you have only a petitesse to report. Even reports on typos or stylos are appreciated.

Incompatibilities and Missing Features

If you fail to compile a certain software because of missing libc functionality report that. Such functions can usually be imported from free sources into the MiNTLib. If you have written a workaround for such a problem it is very likely that this could be already the base for a future implementation.

In brief: Share your experiences and your work with others!

Contributions

If you have too much time and no current programming project, have a look into the file TODO. It lists some things that are still missing in the MiNTLib.

Binary Distribution

I usually do the development on the MiNTLib on a Linux box which is much faster than my TT. Unfortunately, the cross compiler on the Linux box cannot produce code with a sharable text segment (-mbaserel). This makes it very hard for me to build binary distributions.

If you want to volunteer for this task, please get into contact with me. Binary distributions are currently build in two forms. First a conventional tarball. All you have to do for this is type "make && make bin-dist" and wait a few minutes (uhm, probably hours). The resulting tarball "mintlib-.bin.tar.gz" is then ready for upload.

The other form is a binary rpm (rpm is the Redhat Package Manager and also a common name for the files produced by it). You don't need any special knowledge about building rpm files, I can provide you a suitable spec file. All that is left to do is to type "cd /usr/src/redhat/SPECS && rpm -ba mintlib.spec" and upload "mintlib--.m68kmint.rpm" (and the corresponding source rpm if you care).

Other specific tasks

The MiNTLib extensively steals from some other sources, notably the GNU libc and the timezone database (tzcode and tzdata). If you hear of bugs, or bug fixes in these sources, please report that. The timezone database is entirely integrated into the MiNTLib (although the sources have been heavily rehacked). With the GNU libc things are somewhat different. It consists of thousands of files and only few of them are also part of the MiNTLib (those that are marked as being under the GNU Lesser General Public License - formerly known as the GNU Library General Public License). If somebody would systematically scan the GNU libc ChangeLog files for relevant changes, this would really be appreciated very much.

Never ask what MiNT can do for you. Ask what you can do for MiNT.

Thank you!

Sommaire