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+# HexChat Hacking Guidelines
+
+Just some tips if you're going to help with HexChat code (patches etc):
+
+* Use tabs, not spaces, to indent code.
+
+* Use a tab size of 3 (most editors will let you choose this).
+  Type :set ts=3 in vim/gvim.
+
+* Try to stick to the same consistant coding style:
+
+<pre>void
+routine (void)
+{
+	if (function (a, b, c))
+	{
+		x = a + 1;
+	}
+}</pre>
+
+	(vertically aligned braces, a space after if, while, functions etc).
+
+* Don't use "//" C++ style comments, some compilers don't like them.
+
+* When opening a file with Unix level functions (open, read/write, close)
+  as opposed to the C level functions (fopen, fwrite/fread, fclose), use
+  the OFLAGS macro. This makes sure it'll work on Win32 aswell as Unix e.g.:
+
+	<pre>fh = open ("file", OFLAGS | O_RDONLY);</pre>
+
+* Use closesocket() for sockets, and close() for normal files.
+
+* Don't read() from sockets, use recv() instead.
+
+* Please provide unified format diffs (run diff -u).
+
+* Call your patch something more meaningfull than hexchat.diff.
+
+* To make a really nice and clean patch, do something like this:
+
+	* Have two directories, unpacked from the original archive:
+
+		<pre>hexchat-2.9.0/
+		hexchat-2.9.0p1/</pre>
+
+	* Then edit/compile the hexchat-2.9.0p1 directory. To create a patch:
+
+		* Windows:
+
+			<pre>rmdir /q /s hexchat-2.9.0p1/win32/build
+			rmdir /q /s hexchat-2.9.0p1/win32/build-xp
+			diff -ruN --strip-trailing-cr hexchat-2.9.0 hexchat-2.9.0p1 > hexchat-something.diff
+			</pre>
+
+		* Unix:
+
+			<pre>diff -ruN hexchat-2.9.0 hexchat-2.9.0p1 > hexchat-something.diff</pre>
+
+