Getting the development source tree

The aptitude source code is stored in a mercurial repository on hg.debian.org. To download it, install mercurial and run:

hg clone http://hg.debian.org/hg/aptitude/head aptitude

Compiling the development source tree

In addition to the prerequisites listed on the compiling page, you will need to install autoconf and automake-1.9. Once they are installed, run:

./autogen.sh

and then:

./configure && make

Getting the Debian source tree

The Debian packaging of aptitude is stored in a Mercurial repository. To retrieve it, install mercurial and run:

hg clone http://hg.debian.org/hg/aptitude/debian aptitude

hg clone http://hg.debian.org/hg/aptitude/debian-upstream aptitude.upstream

The program hg-buildpackage is used to produce aptitude packages from the Mercurial source tree. After downloading the source as above, cd to the source directory and run

hg-buildpackage

to produce a package of aptitude.

Note that these source trees only reflect work done on the Debian packaging of aptitude; for instance, the upstream branch is only updated when a new release of aptitude is published.

Submitting patches

Patches can be sent to the Debian bug tracking system, to the aptitude project mailing list, aptitude-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org, or to dburrows@algebraicthunk.net. Ideally the patches will be generated from Mercurial, using (e.g.) hg export, but you are welcome to send unified diff format patches as well. Just run hg diff and send the output with your comments.