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!

[NOTE: Please don't report that fchown(), fchmod() are missing.  They
cannot be implemented, this is a kernel caveat.]

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-<VERSION>.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-<VERSION>-<RELEASE>.m68kmint.rpm" (and the corresponding
source rpm if you care).

Note: You currently need about 20-30 MB of free harddisk space and
6000 free inodes to create a full-blown binary MiNTLib distribution.
You should also have a current gcc (>= 2.7.2) and recent binutils
(>= 2.9.1).

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!
