Porting newlib to a new operating system (build dependencies etc..)

[Giacomo Tesio <giacomo at tesio dot it>]

Hi, I'm porting newlib to Jehanne (http://jehanne.io/) to use it as a
POSIX façade.

I've noticed that many os developers just patch a specific version of
newlib and include that in their distribution, but I'd like to keep
the library updated by tracking the official git repository.

I've read that any contribution should be sent as a patch to this
mailing list, but I cannot find anything more specific about the
requirements of such patches and contributions. Right now, I'm
wondering how to produce such patches and I've found some difficulties
with `git diff`, but I'm also interested in the contribution process
itself (eg particular CLAs to sign and so on...).

BTW, I'm using the same (outdated) autotools that I use to build the
GCC cross compiler, but I've noticed that calling `autoreconf`
modifies several files tracked by git that are unrelated to the port
(various aclocal.m4, Makefile.am and so on).
What are the actual build requirements? Also, what is maintainer-mode?


Giacomo