diff --git a/HACKING b/HACKING
index 042371f4c..da966fc63 100644
--- a/HACKING
+++ b/HACKING
@@ -1,5 +1,7 @@
 Here are some guidelines for members of the Guile developers team.
 
+CVS conventions ======================================================
+
 - We use CVS to manage the Guile sources.  The repository lives on
 egcs.cygnus.com, in /egcs/carton/cvsfiles; you will need an account on
 that machine to access the repository.  Also, for security reasons,
@@ -30,22 +32,31 @@ The Guile sources live in several modules:
   - guile-oops --- The Guile Object-Oriented Programming System (talk to mdj)
   - guile-www --- A Guile module for making HTTP requests.
 
-- As for any part of Project GNU, changes to Guile should follow the
-GNU coding standards.  The standards are available via anonymous FTP
-from prep.ai.mit.edu, as /pub/gnu/standards/standards.texi and
-make-stds.texi.
-
-- Check Makefile.in and configure files into CVS, as well as any files
-used to create them (Makefile.am, configure.in); don't check in
-Makefiles or header files generated by configuration scripts.  The
+- We check Makefile.in and configure files into CVS, as well as the
+files they are built from (Makefile.am, configure.in); we do not check
+in Makefiles or header files generated by configuration scripts.  The
 general rule is that you should be able to check out a working
-directory of Guile from CVS, and then type "configure" and "make".
+directory of Guile from CVS, and then type "configure" and "make",
+without running any other tools.
 
 - Make sure your changes compile and work, at least on your own
 machine, before checking them into the main branch of the Guile
 repository.  If you really need to check in untested changes, make a
 branch.
 
+- Include each log entry in both the ChangeLog and in the CVS logs.
+If you're using Emacs, the pcl-cvs interface to CVS has features to
+make this easier; it checks the ChangeLog, and generates good default
+CVS log entries from that.
+
+
+Coding standards =====================================================
+
+- As for any part of Project GNU, changes to Guile should follow the
+GNU coding standards.  The standards are available via anonymous FTP
+from prep.ai.mit.edu, as /pub/gnu/standards/standards.texi and
+make-stds.texi.
+
 - When you make a user-visible change (i.e. one that should be
 documented, and appear in NEWS, put an asterisk in column zero of the
 start of the ChangeLog entry, like so:
@@ -58,11 +69,6 @@ When you've written a NEWS entry and updated the documentation, go
 ahead and remove the asterisk.  I will use the asterisks to find and
 document changes that haven't been dealt with before a release.
 
-- Include each log entry in both the ChangeLog and in the CVS logs.
-If you're using Emacs, the pcl-cvs interface to CVS has features to
-make this easier; it checks the ChangeLog, and generates good default
-CVS log entries from that.
-
 - There's no need to keep a change log for documentation files.  This
 is because documentation is not susceptible to bugs that are hard to
 fix.  Documentation does not consist of parts that must interact in a
@@ -70,11 +76,6 @@ precisely engineered fashion; to correct an error, you need not know
 the history of the erroneous passage.  (This is copied from the GNU
 coding standards.)
 
-- If you add or remove files, don't forget to update the appropriate
-part of the relevant Makefile.am files, and regenerate the
-Makefile.in.  If you forget this, the snapshot and distribution
-processes will not work.
-
 - Make sure you have papers from people before integrating their
 changes or contributions.  This is very frustrating, but very
 important to do right.  From maintain.texi, "Information for
@@ -100,6 +101,9 @@ until we have the necessary papers.
 - When you make substantial changes to a file, add the current year to
 the list of years in the copyright notice at the top of the file.
 
+
+Helpful hints ========================================================
+
 - [From Mikael Djurfeldt] When working on the Guile internals, it is
 quite often practical to implement a scheme-level procedure which
 helps you examine the feature you're working on.