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view scripts/help/help.m @ 27918:b442ec6dda5c
use centralized file for copyright info for individual contributors
* COPYRIGHT.md: New file.
* In most other files, use "Copyright (C) YYYY-YYYY The Octave Project
Developers" instead of tracking individual names in separate source
files. The motivation is to reduce the effort required to update the
notices each year.
Until now, the Octave source files contained copyright notices that
list individual contributors. I adopted these file-scope copyright
notices because that is what everyone was doing 30 years ago in the
days before distributed version control systems. But now, with many
contributors and modern version control systems, having these
file-scope copyright notices causes trouble when we update copyright
years or refactor code.
Over time, the file-scope copyright notices may become outdated as new
contributions are made or code is moved from one file to
another. Sometimes people contribute significant patches but do not
add a line claiming copyright. Other times, people add a copyright
notice for their contribution but then a later refactoring moves part
or all of their contribution to another file and the notice is not
moved with the code. As a practical matter, moving such notices is
difficult -- determining what parts are due to a particular
contributor requires a time-consuming search through the project
history. Even managing the yearly update of copyright years is
problematic. We have some contributors who are no longer
living. Should we update the copyright dates for their contributions
when we release new versions? Probably not, but we do still want to
claim copyright for the project as a whole.
To minimize the difficulty of maintaining the copyright notices, I
would like to change Octave's sources to use what is described here:
https://softwarefreedom.org/resources/2012/ManagingCopyrightInformation.html
in the section "Maintaining centralized copyright notices":
The centralized notice approach consolidates all copyright
notices in a single location, usually a top-level file.
This file should contain all of the copyright notices
provided project contributors, unless the contribution was
clearly insignificant. It may also credit -- without a copyright
notice -- anyone who helped with the project but did not
contribute code or other copyrighted material.
This approach captures less information about contributions
within individual files, recognizing that the DVCS is better
equipped to record those details. As we mentioned before, it
does have one disadvantage as compared to the file-scope
approach: if a single file is separated from the distribution,
the recipient won't see the contributors' copyright notices.
But this can be easily remedied by including a single
copyright notice in each file's header, pointing to the
top-level file:
Copyright YYYY-YYYY The Octave Project Developers
See the COPYRIGHT file at the top-level directory
of this distribution or at https://octave.org/COPYRIGHT.html.
followed by the usual GPL copyright statement.
For more background, see the discussion here:
https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/octave-maintainers/2020-01/msg00009.html
Most files in the following directories have been skipped intentinally
in this changeset:
doc
libgui/qterminal
liboctave/external
m4
author | John W. Eaton <jwe@octave.org> |
---|---|
date | Mon, 06 Jan 2020 15:38:17 -0500 |
parents | 00f796120a6d |
children | 1891570abac8 |
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## Copyright (C) 2009-2019 The Octave Project Developers ## ## See the file COPYRIGHT.md in the top-level directory of this distribution ## or <https://octave.org/COPYRIGHT.html/>. ## ## ## This file is part of Octave. ## ## Octave is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it ## under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by ## the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or ## (at your option) any later version. ## ## Octave is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but ## WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of ## MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the ## GNU General Public License for more details. ## ## You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License ## along with Octave; see the file COPYING. If not, see ## <https://www.gnu.org/licenses/>. ## -*- texinfo -*- ## @deftypefn {} {} help @var{name} ## @deftypefnx {} {} help --list ## @deftypefnx {} {} help . ## @deftypefnx {} {} help ## Display the help text for @var{name}. ## ## For example, the command @kbd{help help} prints a short message describing ## the @code{help} command. ## ## Given the single argument @code{--list}, list all operators, keywords, ## built-in functions, and loadable functions available in the current session ## of Octave. ## ## Given the single argument @code{.}, list all operators available in the ## current session of Octave. ## ## If invoked without any arguments, @code{help} displays instructions on how ## to access help from the command line. ## ## The help command can provide information about most operators, but ## @var{name} must be enclosed by single or double quotes to prevent ## the Octave interpreter from acting on @var{name}. For example, ## @code{help "+"} displays help on the addition operator. ## @seealso{doc, lookfor, which, info} ## @end deftypefn function retval = help (name) if (nargin == 0) text = "\n\ For help with individual commands and functions type\n\ \n\ help NAME\n\ \n\ (replace NAME with the name of the command or function you would\n\ like to learn more about; for an operator, enclose \"NAME\" in quotes).\n\ \n\ For a more detailed introduction to GNU Octave, consult the manual.\n\ The manual may be read from the prompt by typing\n\ \n\ doc\n\ \n\ GNU Octave is supported and developed by its user community.\n\ For more information visit https://www.octave.org.\n\n"; if (nargout == 0) puts (text); else retval = text; endif elseif (nargin == 1 && ischar (name)) if (strcmp (name, "--list")) list = do_list_functions (); if (nargout == 0) printf ("%s", list); else retval = list; endif return; endif if (strcmp (name, ".")) list = do_list_operators (); if (nargout == 0) printf ("%s", list); else retval = list; endif return; endif ## Get help text [text, format] = get_help_text (name); ## Take action depending on help text format switch (lower (format)) case "plain text" status = 0; case "texinfo" [text, status] = __makeinfo__ (text, "plain text"); case "html" [text, status] = strip_html_tags (text); case "not documented" error ("help: '%s' is not documented\n", name); case "not found" do_contents (name); return; otherwise error ("help: internal error: unsupported help text format: '%s'\n", format); endswitch ## Print text if (status != 0) warning ("help: Texinfo formatting filter exited abnormally; raw Texinfo source of help text follows...\n"); endif if (nargout == 0) if (! any (strcmp (name, {'./', '.\', '...'}))) evalin ("caller", ['which ("' undo_string_escapes(name) '")']); endif printf ("\n%s\n%s", text, __additional_help_message__ ()); else retval = text; endif else error ("help: invalid input\n"); endif endfunction function retval = do_list_operators () retval = sprintf ("*** operators:\n\n%s\n%s\n\n", list_in_columns (__operators__ ()), ["To obtain help on an operator, type\n"... " help \"NAME\" or help 'NAME'"]); endfunction function retval = do_list_functions () operators = do_list_operators (); keywords = sprintf ("*** keywords:\n\n%s\n\n", list_in_columns (__keywords__ ())); builtins = sprintf ("*** builtins:\n\n%s\n\n", list_in_columns (__builtins__ ())); dirs = ostrsplit (path, pathsep); flist = ""; for i = 2:numel (dirs) files = sort ({dir(fullfile (dirs{i}, "*.m")).name, ... dir(fullfile (dirs{i}, "*.oct")).name, ... dir(fullfile (dirs{i}, "*.mex")).name}); if (! isempty (files)) flist = sprintf ("%s*** functions in %s:\n\n%s\n\n", flist, dirs{i}, list_in_columns (files)); endif endfor retval = [operators, keywords, builtins, flist]; endfunction function do_contents (name) found = false; dlist = dir_in_loadpath (name, "all"); for i = 1:numel (dlist) fname = make_absolute_filename (fullfile (dlist{i}, "Contents.m")); [text, format] = get_help_text_from_file (fname); ## Take action depending on help text format switch (lower (format)) case "plain text" status = 0; case "texinfo" [text, status] = __makeinfo__ (text, "plain text"); case "html" [text, status] = strip_html_tags (text); endswitch if (! isempty (text)) found = true; ## Print text. if (status != 0) warning ("help: Texinfo formatting filter exited abnormally; raw Texinfo source of help text follows...\n"); endif printf ("%s:\n\n%s\n", fname, text); endif endfor if (found) puts (__additional_help_message__ ()); else msg = feval (missing_function_hook, name); if (isempty (msg)) msg = sprintf ("'%s' not found", name); endif error ("help: %s\n", msg); endif endfunction %!assert (! isempty (strfind (help ("ls"), "List directory contents"))) %!assert (! isempty (strfind (help ("."), "||"))) ## Test input validation %!error <invalid input> help (42) %!error <invalid input> help ("abc", "def") %!error <'_! UNLIKELY_FCN! _' not found> help ("_! UNLIKELY_FCN! _")