GNU Development Resources

★ wanayoo — archive 1999 http://www.gnu.org/software/devel.html

Introduction

This page describes the development services available for GNU developers on GNU Project machines. If you would like to make use of one of these service for development of a GNU package, please contact gnu@gnu.org.

With the abundance of inexpensive computers that can run GNU/Linux, as well as the greater availability of Internet access, many GNU volunteers today have all the computer facilities they need. However, there are still advantages to having a central computers where GNU volunteers can work together without having to make their own machines accessible to others.

For that reason, the Free Software Foundation encourages GNU software projects to use the machines at gnu.org as a home base. Using these machines also benefits the GNU Project indirectly, by increasing public awareness of GNU, and spreading the idea of working together for the benefit of everyone.

Login Accounts

We give out login access to the GNU machines to people who need them for work on GNU software. Having a login account is both a privilege and a responsibility, and they should be used only for your work on GNU. If you don't have an account and you need one, please contact gnu@gnu.org.

CVS

We provide remote CVS access for several GNU packages; if you are developing a GNU package and would like to keep the repository on the gnu.org machines, contact gnu@gnu.org.

In general, anonymous read-only access to the CVS repository works as follows:

$ cvs -d :pserver:anoncvs@anoncvs.gnu.org:/gd/gnu/anoncvsroot login
Password: [just hit enter]
$ cvs -d :pserver:anoncvs@anoncvs.gnu.org:/gd/gnu/anoncvsroot checkout module

where module is the name of the CVS module you are interested in.

Here are the module names for a few packages that are available via anonymous CVS:

gcc: The GNU C Compiler.
gnumach: The GNU Mach microkernel used by the Hurd.
grub: GNU GRUB, the GRand Unified Bootloader used by the Hurd.
hurd: The GNU Hurd kernel servers.
libtool: GNU Libtool, a portable shell script to help develop and maintain shared libraries.
make: GNU Make.
mig: The Mach Interface Generator, an RPC stub generator used by GNU Mach and the Hurd.
Oleo: Oleo is the GNU spreadsheet package supporting curses, X and motif.
InetUtils: InetUtils is a collection of network utilities, mostly based on BSD source.
mailutils: Mailutils is a collection of mail related utilities (pop3d, mail, etc..)

Note: the gnumach, hurd, and mig modules are read-only mirrors of another machine. Their contents may lag up to a day behind the actual state of development.

Regular read-write remote CVS is available for everybody with a GNU login account, as well as an additional list to which we can add people at the request of package maintainers. However, you should generally stick to read-only anonymous CVS unless you have permission from a maintainer to check code into the tree. There is nothing more frustrating than when somebody commits changes without first clearing them with the package's regular maintainers.

Mailing Lists

We operate mailing lists for GNU software packages as needed, including both hand-managed lists and automatically managed lists. Ask gnu@gnu.org to create lists for you, or create them yourself if you're sure you know how.

In general, each GNU software package ought to have a bug-reporting list with the canonical name bug-name@gnu.org, plus whatever other aliases may be useful. Some packages share the list bug-gnu-utils@gnu.org but we now encourage packages to set up their own individual lists.

Packages can have other lists for announcements, for asking for help, for posting related source code, for discussion among users, or whatever the package maintainer thinks is useful.

When a mailing list becomes large enough to justify it, we can set up a gnu.* newsgroup with a two-way link to the mailing list.

Web Server

Our master web server is located at http://www.gnu.org/, and has mirrors around the world. We would like to host pages on this server about each and every GNU software package.

The machine which serves the www.gnu.org web pages is separate from the rest of the GNU machines, so you need a separate account if you want to log in on it.

FTP

We can also provide an FTP site for any GNU software package on ftp://ftp.gnu.org/, which is mirrored worldwide. Contact gnu@gnu.org if you would like to use this site as the distribution center for your package.

We use a different server for test releases, so that people won't install them thinking they are ready for prime time. This server is ftp://alpha.gnu.org/. Contact gnu@gnu.org if you would like to use this site to distribute pretests of your package.

Return to GNU's home page.

Please send FSF & GNU inquiries & questions to gnu@gnu.org. There are also other ways to contact the FSF.

Please send comments on these web pages to webmasters@www.gnu.org, send other questions to gnu@gnu.org.

Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is permitted in any medium, provided this notice is preserved.

Updated: 2 Oct 1999 neel