Previous: Releases, Up: Obtaining ERC

### 2.2 Development

Choose the development version if you want to live on the bleeding edge of ERC development or try out new features before release.

The git version control system allows you to keep up-to-date with the latest changes to the development version of ERC. It also allows you to contribute changes (via commits, if you are have developer access to the repository, or via patches, otherwise). If you would like to contribute to ERC development, it is highly recommended that you use git.

If you are new to git, you might find this tutorial helpful: http://www.kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/gittutorial.html.

Downloading ERC with git and staying up-to-date involves the following steps.

1. Install git.
   - Debian and Ubuntu: `apt-get install git-core`.
   - Windows: http://git.or.cz/gitwiki/WindowsInstall.
   - Other operating systems: download, compile, and install the source from http://www.kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/, or find a git package for your operating system.
2. Download the ERC development branch.

   If you have developer access to ERC, do:

                 git clone ssh://loginname@git.sv.gnu.org/srv/git/erc.git

   otherwise, do:

                 git clone git://git.sv.gnu.org/erc.git

   If you are behind a restrictive firewall, and do not have developer access, then do the following instead:

                 git clone http://git.sv.gnu.org/r/erc.git

3. List upstream changes that are missing from your local copy. Do this whenever you want to see whether new changes have been committed to ERC. If you wish, you may skip this step and proceed directly to the “update” step.

                 # Change to the source directory you are interested in.
                 cd erc

                 # Fetch new changes from the repository, but don't apply them yet
                 git fetch origin

                 # Display log messages for the new changes
                 git log HEAD..origin

   “origin” is git's name for the location where you originally got ERC from. You can change this location at any time by editing the `.git/config` file in the directory where the ERC source was placed.

4. Update to the latest version by pulling in any missing changes.

                 cd erc
                 git pull origin

   git will show how many files changed, and will provide a visual display for how many lines were changed in each file.

There are other ways to interact with the ERC repository.

- Browse git repo: http://git.sv.gnu.org/gitweb/?p=erc.git
- Latest development snapshot: http://mwolson.org/static/dist/erc-latest.tar.gz
- Latest development snapshot (zip file): http://mwolson.org/static/dist/erc-latest.zip

The latest development snapshot can lag behind the git repo by as much as 20 minutes, but never more than that.

For further information on committing changes to ERC and performing development, please consult http://emacswiki.org/cgi-bin/wiki/ErcDevelopment.