The Tools of Open Source:

1
The Tools of Open Source

• What you need to know to participate
• Ray Kimsey
• ADEC / NC State University
• Ron L. Roeber
• University of Nebraska - Lincoln

2
Successful Open Source Projects

• Linux
• Apache Projects
• HTTP
• Perl
• PHP
• Sendmail

3
Characteristics of successful projects

• 1. Good programmers working on a project on which
  they want to work.

4
Characteristics of successful projects

• 2. Communication coordination of effort
• Generally no F2F meetings
• Rely on technology for communications - Email is
  LCD a lot of times

5
Characteristics of successful projects

• 3. Version management
• Small number of core programmers
• Large number of contributors
• Patches
• Features
• Concurrent Versions System (CVS)

6
Characteristics of successful projects

• 4. Growth ? Project management
• Bug tracking resolution
• Task management

7
Characteristics of successful projects

• 5. Up-to-date web page
• Explains what the software does
• Provides latest project information
• Details the licensing agreement
• Acknowledges any special system requirements

8
CVSVersion Control Distributed Application
Development
9
What is CVS?

• CVS stands for "Concurrent Versions System"
• CVS records a complete history of a project
• Centralized vs. Decentralized development
• Team and distributed development

10
CVS Overview

• CVS is a software development repositorty that
  facilitates the distributed development of code
  (Python, Perl, PHP, HTML)
• CVS allows for versioning software and websites
• CVS works best with text files but does "handle"
  graphics and other binary files

11
CVS Software

• A CVS repository resides on a server. CVS
  commands are issued "on the server".
• CVS is not a protocol or daemon. It is "easy" to
  set up and get running on a server.
• Developers interact (usually) with the CVS tree
  via locally running software
• WinCVS
• MacCVS
• Pharmacy or tkCVS
• Built-in to many tools (Emacs, Quanta)

12
CVS Concept

• Common Development Traits
• Build Software, make it live
• Give other people access to code
• Developer/Designer at the center of activities
• CVS Development
• Repository is at the center of activity
• Developers, designers, studentseven the live web
  site checks out its own copy.

13
How CVS works in English

• Create an application
• When ready for viewing or sharing, place it in
  repository
• Login to the server
• Checkout a working copy
• Make changes to your copy. . .

14
How CVS works in English

• See what others have done
• Resolve conflicts
• Commit the changes to the repository

15
Using CVS

• CVS client software allows users machines to
  interact with the CVS repository by issuing the
  appropriate commands and sub-commands.
• WinCVS
• MacCVS
• Pharmacy
• tkCVS
• Built in to Emacs/Xemacs, Quanta Gold, others

16
CVS Sub-Commands

• import - create a repository entry
• checkout - get a copy of the files from the
  repository
• update - Update all changes others have made and
  refresh my working copy accordingly. Nothing
  changes in the repository
• commit - Add your changes to the CVS repository

17
CVS Directory Files
CVS directory contain instructions for building
any previous version of the project

• CVSROOT
• --oursite
• --index.html,v
• --graphics
• --clover.png,v

18
Time Travel

• History files contain all the information
  required to construct the present version of each
  file.
• Any previous version can be constructed
• versions 1.1 or as of May 3, 2002 can be
  resurrected

19
Handling Binary Files

• Line Feed Format Repository vs. Client
• Keyword Substitution
• Wrappers
• cvs admin -kb

20
Web Access

• Look at CVS tree in living color!
• Browsing of a CVS repository
• ViewCVS
• http//viewcvs.sourceforge.net/
• CVSweb
• http//people.freebsd.org/fenner/cvsweb/

21
Configuration Files

• modules - definitions of your names for
  sites/projects
• cvswrappers - set hook for transforming files on
  the way in or out of CVS (binaries)
• commitinfo - checks to see if a commit is allowed
  based on policies
• verifymsg - evaluates log message

22
Configuration Files

• editinfo - program used to edit log message
  (NIX)
• loginfo - calls programs to run when commit is
  complete
• cvsignore - ignore these files of mine (.BAK,
  .exe, .old, .ron)

23
Automations

• e-mail others
• update sites
• check for formatting

24
What CVS is not

• A substitute for management
• A substitute for communication
• Is not an automated testing program
• Does not have a built-in process model
• Does not have change control

25
Limitations

• Best if you have an investment in nix
  environments
• Designed for programmers
• Concepts are hard to grasp
• Alien concept to designers

26
Helper Applications

• LXR Linux Cross Referencing Tool
  http//lxr.linux.no/
• Bonsai Query contents of CVS archive-tree
  control http//www.mozilla.org/bonsai.html
• TinderBox prevent things from going up in
  flames for large number of developers
  http//www.mozilla.org/tinderbox.html
• Bugzilla bug reporting and tracking
  http//bugzilla.mozilla.org/

27
Alternatives

• DAV - (Distributed Authoring and Versioning)
  http//www.webdav.org
• arch - http//www.regexps.com/arch.html
• Perforce http//www.perforce.com/

28
Demonstration

• SourceForge http//www.sf.net
• Bioinformatics.Org http//bioinformatics.org
• ADEC http//savannah.ces.ncsu.edu