GNU Development Resources
This page describes the development services available for GNU developers on GNU Project machines. For full details of the privileges and responsibilities of GNU maintainers, please see the Information for GNU Maintainers document, and also follow the GNU Coding Standards. Also interesting to review may be the overview of what it means to be a GNU package.
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 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 strongly 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.
Savannah and version control
If you are developing an official GNU package, we strongly recommend using a public source control repository on Savannah, the GNU hosting server. To do this, first create yourself an account and then register your GNU package. After it is created, you will be able to choose a version control system, create web pages for your package, manage permissions for contributors to the pages, and many other features.
Mailing lists
We operate mailing lists for GNU software packages as needed, including both hand-managed lists and automatically managed lists.
When a GNU package is registered on Savannah, a web interface allows developers to create and manage mailing lists dedicated to their package.
Each GNU package name ought to have at least a bug-reporting
list with the canonical name bug-name@gnu.org,
plus any aliases that may be useful. Using Savannah, you can create
lists for your package with names like this. 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, asking for help, posting source code, for discussion among users, or whatever the package maintainer finds to be useful.
Mailing list archives for automatically-managed lists are available
at http://lists.gnu.org, as well as
through the list manager. Archives for hand-maintained lists are
generally kept in /com/archive on the GNU machines.
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 pages
The master GNU web server is http://www.gnu.org/. We very strongly recommend that GNU packages use http://www.gnu.org/software/package as their primary home page.
Using Savannah, developers can create and maintain their own pages at that url via a CVS “web repository”, separate from the package's main source repository (which can use any supported version control system). More information on maintaining GNU web pages.
FTP
The primary ftp site for GNU software on http://ftp.gnu.org/,
which is mirrored worldwide. We very
strongly recommend that all GNU packages upload their releases here (in
addition to any other location you find convenient).
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/.
The Information for GNU Maintainers document has complete details on the ftp upload process, which is the same for both servers.
Login accounts
We provide shell login access to 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. Instructions for obtaining an account machines are written separately.
On the general login machine, the gsrc package developers maintain a hierarchy of the current GNU package releases (/gd/gnu/gnusys/live), compiled from the original sources. To use it, source /gd/gnu/gnusys/live/setup.
You can also use a GNU account for email.
Hydra: Continuous builds and portability testing
Continuous build tools (often referred to as continuous integration tools) allow programming errors to be spotted soon after they are introduced in a software project, which is particularly useful for cooperatively developed software.
Hydra is a free continuous build tool based on the Nix package manager. Administrators of the Hydra instance at the Delft University of Technology have generously offered slots for the GNU Project.
Currently it can build software on GNU/Linux (i686 and x86_64) as
well as FreeBSD, Darwin, and Cygwin, and can cross-build for GNU/Hurd,
GNU/Linux on other architectures, and MinGW. It can provide code
coverage reports produced using LCOV. In addition to source tarballs
and Nix packages, it can build packages for deb- and
RPM-based distributions. Packages can be built against the
latest versions of their dependencies; for instance, GnuTLS is built
using GNU libtasn1 and GNU libgcrypt builds corresponding to
their latest revision. Finally, in addition to the web interface, Hydra
can send notifications by email when the build status of a project
changes (e.g., from SUCCEEDED to FAILED.)
Any GNU software package can request a slot on Hydra. Each package must provide its own “build recipe” written in the Nix language (a Nix expression, in Nix parlance). Nix expressions for GNU projects are available via Git. For simple projects using standard GNU build tools such as Automake and Autoconf, the recipe is usually fairly simple. For example, see the recipe for Patch. You are welcome to ask for guidance on hydra-users@gnu.org.
After constructing your build recipe, email hydra-users@gnu.org
and ask to be included in Hydra. Also make sure to become a member of
the hydra-recipes
project at Savannah. This will allow you to customize your
project's build job directly.
For technical information about Hydra, please consult the manual of Hydra (PDF). For more details, please refer to the Nix manual and the Nixpkgs manual.