convert HACKING to markdown, add MSVC section

1 files changed, 113 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/HACKING.md b/HACKING.md
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..aa965ca
--- /dev/null
+++ b/HACKING.md
@@ -0,0 +1,113 @@
+
+### Adjusting build flags
+
+    CFLAGS=-O3 ./configure.py
+
+### Testing
+
+#### Installing gtest
+
+* On older Ubuntus it'll install as libraries into `/usr/lib`:
+
+        apt-get install libgtest
+
+* On newer Ubuntus it's only distributed as source
+
+        apt-get install libgtest-dev
+        ./configure --with-gtest=/usr/src/gtest
+
+* Otherwise you need to download it, unpack it, and pass --with-gtest
+  as appropriate.
+
+#### Test-driven development
+
+Set your build command to
+
+    ./ninja ninja_test && ./ninja_test --gtest_filter=MyTest.Name
+
+now you can repeatedly run that while developing until the tests pass.
+Remember to build "all" before committing to verify the other source
+still works!
+
+### Testing performance impact of changes
+
+If you have a Chrome build handy, it's a good test case.
+Otherwise, https://github.com/martine/ninja/downloads has a copy of
+the Chrome build files (and depfiles). You can untar that, then run
+
+    path/to/my/ninja chrome
+
+and compare that against a baseline Ninja.
+
+There's a script at `misc/measure.py` that repeatedly runs a command like
+the above (to address variance) and summarizes its runtime.  E.g.
+
+    path/to/misc/measure.py path/to/my/ninja chrome
+
+For changing the depfile parser, you can also build `parser_perftest`
+and run that directly on some representative input files.
+
+## Coding guidelines
+
+Generally it's the [Google C++ coding style][], but in brief:
+
+* Function name are camelcase.
+* Member methods are camelcase, expect for trivial getters which are
+  underscore separated.
+* Local variables are underscore separated.
+* Member variables are underscore separated and suffixed by an extra underscore.
+* Two spaces indentation.
+* Opening braces is at the end of line.
+* Lines are 80 columns maximum.
+* All source files should have the Google Inc. license header.
+
+[Google C++ coding style]: http://google-styleguide.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/cppguide.xml
+
+## Documentation
+
+### Style guidelines
+
+* Use `///` for doxygen.
+* Use `\a` to refer to arguments.
+* It's not necessary to document each argument, especially when they're
+  relatively self-evident (e.g. in `CanonicalizePath(string* path, string* err)`,
+  the arguments are hopefully obvious)
+
+### Building the manual
+
+    sudo apt-get install asciidoc --no-install-recommends
+    ./ninja manual
+
+## Building on Windows
+
+While developing, it's helpful to copy `ninja.exe` to another name like
+`n.exe`; otherwise, rebuilds will be unable to write `ninja.exe` because
+it's locked while in use.
+
+### Via Visual Studio
+
+* Install Visual Studio (Express is fine), [Python for Windows][],
+  and (if making changes) googletest (see above instructions)
+* In a Visual Studio command prompt: `python bootstrap.py`
+
+[Python for Windows]: http://www.python.org/getit/windows/
+
+### Via mingw on Linux (not well supported)
+
+* `sudo apt-get install gcc-mingw32 wine`
+* `export CC=i586-mingw32msvc-cc CXX=i586-mingw32msvc-c++ AR=i586-mingw32msvc-ar`
+* `./configure.py --platform=mingw --host=linux`
+* Build `ninja.exe` using a Linux ninja binary: `/path/to/linux/ninja`
+* Run: `./ninja.exe`  (implicitly runs through wine(!))
+
+### Via mingw on Windows (not well supported)
+* Install mingw, msys, and python
+* In the mingw shell, put Python in your path, and: python bootstrap.py
+* To reconfigure, run `python configure.py`
+* Remember to strip the resulting executable if size matters to you
+
+## Clang
+
+Enable colors manually via `-fcolor-diagnostics`:
+
+    CXX='/path/to/llvm/Release+Asserts/bin/clang++ -fcolor-diagnostics' ./configure.py