C.2.1 Accessing The gawk Git Repository

As gawk is Free Software, the source code is always available. The gawk Distribution, describes how to get and build the formal, released versions of gawk.

However, if you want to modify gawk and contribute back your changes, you will probably wish to work with the development version. To do so, you will need to access the gawk source code repository. The code is maintained using the Git distributed version control system. You will need to install it if your system doesn’t have it. Once you have done so, use the command:

git clone git://git.savannah.gnu.org/gawk.git

This will clone the gawk repository. If you are behind a firewall that will not allow you to use the Git native protocol, you can still access the repository using:

git clone http://git.savannah.gnu.org/r/gawk.git

Once you have made changes, you can use ‘git diff’ to produce a patch, and send that to the gawk maintainer; see Reporting Problems and Bugs for how to do that.

Finally, if you cannot install Git (e.g., if it hasn’t been ported yet to your operating system), you can use the Git–CVS gateway to check out a copy using CVS, as follows:

cvs -d:pserver:anonymous@pserver.git.sv.gnu.org:/gawk.git co -d gawk master