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1.2 Overview of work flow

Git is a version control system that tracks the history of a program’s source code. The LilyPond source code is maintained as a Git repository, which contains:

• all of the source files needed to build LilyPond, and
• a record of the entire history of every change made to every file since the program was born.

The ‘official’ LilyPond Git repository is hosted by the GNU Savannah software forge at https://git.sv.gnu.org. The server provides two separate interfaces for viewing the LilyPond Git repository online: cgit and gitweb.

However, the main development takes place at https://gitlab.com/lilypond/lilypond/, which also hosts the project’s issues. Automatic mirroring ensures that ‘important’ branches (such as master and stable/*) are up to date on the ‘official’ repository at GNU Savannah, so you can also base your development on a clone from there.

Compiling (‘building’) LilyPond allows developers to see how changes to the source code affect the program itself. Compiling is also needed to package the program for specific operating systems or distributions. LilyPond can be compiled from a local Git repository (for developers), or from a downloaded tarball (for packagers). Compiling LilyPond is a rather involved process, and most contributor tasks do not require it.

Contributors can contact the developers through the ‘lilypond-devel’ mailing list. The mailing list archive is located at https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/lilypond-devel/. If you have a question for the developers, search the archives first to see if the issue has already been discussed. Otherwise, send an email to lilypond-devel@gnu.org. You can subscribe to the developers’ mailing list here: https://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/lilypond-devel.