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$Id: HACKING 6728 2008-01-17 07:22:03Z fyodor $

Nmap HACKING
------------

Information for potential Nmap hackers!

Source is provided to Nmap because we believe users have a
right to know exactly what a program is going to do before they run
it.  This also allows you to audit the software for security holes
(none have been found so far).

Source code also allows you to port Nmap to new platforms, fix bugs,
and add new features.  You are highly encouraged to send your changes
to nmap-dev@insecure.org for possible incorporation into the main
distribution.  By sending these changes to Fyodor or one the
insecure.org development mailing lists, it is assumed that you are
offering Fyodor the unlimited, non-exclusive right to reuse, modify,
and relicense the code.  This is important because the inability to
relicense code has caused devastating problems for other Free Software
projects (such as KDE and NASM).  Nmap will always be available Open
Source.  If you wish to specify special license conditions of your
contributions, just say so when you send them.

Nmap is a community project and has already benefitted greatly from
outside contributors (for examples, see the CHANGELOG at
http://nmap.org/changelog.html).  Bugfixes, and portability changes
will almost always be accepted.  Even if you do not have time to track
down and patch a problem, bug reports are always welcome.

Hackers interested in something more major, such as a new feature, are
encouraged to send a mail describing their plans to
nmap-dev@insecure.org .  This is a good way to solicit feedback on
your proposals.  List members are often very willing to help.  You
might want to subscribe to that mailing list as well -- send a blank
email to nmap-dev-subscribe@insecure.org .  While you are at it, you
might also want to subscribe to nmap-hackers via the same mechanism.
Web archives of those lists are at http://lists.insecure.org .

If you are not ready to send details of your feature to the whole
list, you can always start by mailing fyodor@insecure.org .

Some ideas of useful contributions/projects
-------------------------------------------

Of course, you are welcome to work on whatever suits your fancy.  But
here are some ideas of contributions that might be particularly
useful:

o Nmap GUI improvements -- Zenmap is the Nmap GUI. If you have
  enhancement ideas, give it a shot!  Alternatively, consider
  contributing to the NmapGUI and Umit projects available at
  http://sourceforge.net/projects/nmapgui/ and
  http://umit.sourceforge.net/ , respectively.

One of the best ways to help is to join the nmap-dev list
( http://cgi.insecure.org/mailman/listinfo/nmap-dev ).  Requests for
assistance and new Nmap-related projects are often posted there.

How to make code contributions
------------------------------

The preferred mechanism for submitted changes is unified diffs against
the latest development release version of Nmap.  Please send them to
fyodor@insecure.org or nmap-dev@insecure.org .  

To make a unified diff, please follow these instructions:

1. Remove temporary files:
    make clean

2. Rename your source tree:
    cd ..
    mv nmap-2.54BETA4 nmap-2.54BETA4-snazzy-feature

3. Unpack the original Nmap source alongside it:
    tar xzf nmap-2.54BETA4.tgz

4. Generate the diffs:
   diff -urNb nmap-2.54BETA4 nmap-2.54BETA4-snazzy-feature > nmap.patch

5. Check the patch and remove any unnecessary patches from the file.

6. If you've added several features, it's best to send them as
   several independent patches if you can.

If you have just patched one or two files, then making patches is even
easier. For each file, just do:

  cp file.c file.c.orig
  [Make changes to file.c ...]
  diff -u file.c.orig file.c > file.c.patch

and just send us the patch: file.c.patch.


Credits
-------

I got the idea for this HACKING file from GNet 
(http://www.gnetlibrary.org/) and followed the
general structure of their HACKING file.