Developer Notes

How to Contribute

See CONTRIBUTING.md for the comprehensive guide how to contribute code to this project.

The current wiki page contains a few addenda and supporting resources for netatalk developers.

The examples in the following sections are based off of the tools and syntax used by git v1.5.3 or later. Either apt-get, yum, or make install the tools. See Git documentation for more details on this part.

Basic Netatalk Git

The mother git repository is located at https://github.com/Netatalk/netatalk.git

If you are a Netatalk team member, you create and push work branches directly in the mother repository.

If you are an non-member code contributor (thank you for volunteering!) then work from your own fork of the Netatalk repository. Please follow the GitHub workflow to create your fork, and then clone that fork in the steps below.

Step Zero is to set your name and email address for commits:

$ git config --global user.email [email protected]
$ git config --global user.name "Your Real Name"

Next, clone the repository:

$ git clone https://github.com/Netatalk/netatalk.git 
Initialized empty Git repository in /home/frank/test/.git/
remote: Counting objects: 31503, done.
remote: Compressing objects: 100% (11427/11427), done.
remote: Total 31503 (delta 24830), reused 25450 (delta 19869)
Receiving objects: 100% (31503/31503), 6.52 MiB | 2.38 MiB/s, done.
Resolving deltas: 100% (24830/24830), done.
$ cd netatalk

List local and remote branches:

$ git branch
  * main

$ git branch -r
origin/branch-netatalk-2-0
origin/branch-netatalk-2-1
origin/branch-netatalk-2-2
origin/branch-netatalk-3-0
origin/branch-netatalk-3-1
origin/main

Creating your own working branch from main:

$ git checkout main
$ git checkout -b my_branch
Branch my_branch set up to track remote branch refs/remotes/origin/develop.
Switched to a new branch "my_branch"

Do your own local work:

$ mkdir git-test
$ echo "hello" > git-test/README

View status of changes

$ git status
# On branch my_branch
# Untracked files:
#   (use "git add `<file>`..." to include in what will be committed)
# 
#       git-test/
nothing added to commit but untracked files present (use "git add" to track)

Add our new file to the local branch index:

$ git add git-test
$ git status
# On branch my_branch
# Changes to be committed:
#   (use "git reset HEAD `<file>`..." to unstage)
#
#       new file:   git-test/README
#

Commit changes:

$ git commit -m "Example file for HOWTO"
Created commit ad9a1eb: Example file for HOWTO
 1 files changed, 1 insertions(+), 0 deletions(-)
 create mode 100644 git-test/README

Do some more work and commit local changes...

Now fetch the remote branch history:

$ git fetch

To present your patchset properly to other developers, please rebase your patches against the branch you are developing against:

$ git rebase origin/main

Obviously, replace "origin/main" by whatever branch you are developing against. If you have created a mess in your local patch queue, "git rebase -i" might help you out.

Links to Developer Resources

• AFP Programming Guide
• AFP Reference Guide
• Inside Macintosh: Macintosh Toolbox Essentials Chapter 7 - Finder Interface
• Inside AppleTalk: AppleTalk Filing Protocol v1.1
• Finder Interface Reference
• Technical Note TN1150 HFS Plus Volume Format
• CarbonHeaders source
• Mac OS X 10.6.2 source
• AppleSingle and AppleDouble v1 format internals
• AppleSingle/AppleDouble Formats for Foreign Files Developer's Note (version2)
• AppleShare: Platforms and Mac OS Releases Supported
• AppleShare and AppleShare IP File Sharing: Chart of All Limitations
• AFP Version Differences