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Last update: May 12, 2008

Development – Helping the GSB Project

Development – Helping the GSB Project Mailing Lists ChangeLogsGetting the Source CodeWhat You Can Do To Help Our Roadmap

This page contains some useful information for people who want to start work developing the GNOME SlackBuild source. We are always looking for volunteer help to any aspect of GNOME SlackBuild, whether it be coders, documentation writers, bug finders, graphic designers, or even friendly advise and encouragement.

Come along to chat in the #gsb IRC channel on freenode.net or send an email to the development list.

If you are looking for other aspects of the GNOME SlackBuild Build system, please return to Main page.

Mailing Lists

There are several mailing lists used by the GNOME SlackBuild project. These are hosted by Google Groups, and in order to read or post to the mailing lists and groups, you must first subscribe. For details about subscription and a full list of our mailing lists, please see our Lists web page.

If you are a developer who would like to work on the GNOME SlackBuild project, you are encouraged to subscribe to two important mailing lists:

ChangeLogs

We have a variety of ChangeLogs available, including an SVN ChangeLog which gives an up to the minute description of the changes that are being made to the SVN developement tree, as well as ChangeLogs available for the binary builds of GNOME SlackBuilds. For a complete list of our ChangeLogs, please see ChangeLog web page.

Getting the Source Code

The only method supported of getting the GNOME SlackBuild source tree is to check out our source code from our svn repository. Please make sure to do so in a directory on a disk partition that has quite a bit of free space. For details about the disk space requirement, please see the Build page, and look at the Disk Space requirements.

Our development takes place in trunk, and if you would like to help develop GNOME SlackBuild, you will need to check this out. ‘trunk’ will always hold our latest build tree and sources, and this is where the majority of the work goes on.

You can check out the GSB Build System using the following command:

Current Branch

This tree contains the latest and most up to date GSB sources. As such, at any time it may be broken (ie, will not build fully) or may cause your system to explode in a shower of wires and capacitors if you run it. This tree is usually only for the latest Slackware/Slamd64 current and may not work on other releases.

$ svn co http://svn.gnomeslackbuild.org/gsb/trunk gsb

Or browse in svn: http://svn.gnomeslackbuild.org/viewvc/trunk

GNOME 2.22 Stable Tree

This is our GNOME 2.22 stable tree for Slackware 12.1 and Slamd64 current (which will soon become Slamd64 12.1) ONLY. This tree is kept up to date with the GNOME 2.22 sources and will be maintained (at least for the short->medium timeframe) with the minor 2.22.x releases GNOME provide.

$ svn co http://svn.gnomeslackbuild.org/gsb/branches/gsb-2.22 gsb22-stable

Or browse in svn: http://svn.gnomeslackbuild.org/viewvc/branches/gsb-2.22

GNOME 2.20 Stable Tree

This is our GNOME 2.20 stable tree for Slackware and Slamd64 12.0 ONLY. This tree is kept up to date with the GNOME 2.20 sources and will be maintained (at least for the short->medium timeframe) with the minor 2.20.x releases GNOME provide.

$ svn co http://svn.gnomeslackbuild.org/gsb/branches/gsb-2.20 gsb20-stable

Or browse in svn: http://svn.gnomeslackbuild.org/viewvc/branches/gsb-2.20

This may take a long time depending on the speed of your internet connection. The svn GSB tree does not only contain our own scripts and patches for building the GNOME Desktop, but also contains external links to other software available via svn, such as the x264 Codec library and NetworkManager. These external links via svn will ease the building of such packages. However, the majority of the tree will consist of SlackBuild build scripts (.SlackBuild), Slackware package description files (slack-desc), and Slackware package requirements (slack-required) files.

If you would like more information about using subversion, please visit their website and read the Subversion Book

What You Can Do To Help

The best way to help the project is to use GSB. With more users and testers, we are more likely able to catch and fix problems. Making sure to report problems you come across is very appreciated and helps immensely. The only thing greater than reporting a problem is offering a solution! Dive right in. Please take a look at our Issues page for the latest and open list of bugs. Patches and fixes are very welcome.

But there are many other ways of helping out the project:

Packages

  • Sometimes the package description file, slack-desc, may have improper spelling, or bad grammar. If you spot something, let us know.
  • slack-required files list all the dependencies of each package. If you find that a package you installed is missing a dependency, please point it out. These small things are sometimes accidently overlooked.
  • Security is important to us as well! Package auditing would be helpful as well. If you ever find that a file has been incorrectly installed, or without proper permissions, please let us know immediately.
  • Package conflicts may occur as well. We are only a small group of volunteers and cannot test every possible combination of software. If you find that one of our packages conflicts with a piece of software on your system, point it out and we will try our best to help resolve any issues.

Hosting

  • MIRRORS are always needed, and the more the better. If you can help with hosting and setting up slapt-get repositories, please speak up! The more hosts we have, the easier it will be for users to download our software. :)

Translations

  • Our web page and slack-desc files are only in English. Please let us know if you are interested in helping translate the web pages into other languages.

Testers

  • Binary Package Testers will be useful to catch any errors or installation problems with the packages we ourselves provide.
  • Build Tree testers are always welcome. Many individuals will prefer the "Build-It-Yourself" method, and we look forward to comments and patches from these users.

Graphics

  • Good graphics artists are always in high demand! If you’re interested in designing icons, splash screen, gdm theme, backgrounds, or graphics for the web site, please don’t hesitate to send us an email. We’d be very interested in hearing from you!

Our Roadmap

What’s the current long term plan for GSB? GNOME is under constant development and improvement, and one of our goals is to follow it as it progresses. Alongside the stable version of GNOME, we will try to maintain a -current branch, which will house the latest and greatest package versions before releasing them into stable. Below is a brief outline of what we have planned.

  1. GNOME 2.22.2 Current Series Begun
    • Stay on top of package updates.
    • Package auditing.
    • Some research into icon compatibility and breaks with KDE.
  1. GNOME 2.22.1 Stable Series Released May 5th.
  1. GNOME 2.22.0 Current Series Begun
  1. GNOME 2.20.3 Stable Series Released Feb 15th.
  1. Gnome 2.20.2 Stable Series
    • Designed to be built and used on Slackware 12.0
    • January 9th: GNOME releases 2.20.3 stable.
    • January 10-13th: GSB svn updates for 2.20.3 release. New binary packages are build and uploaded to master server.
    • January 14-20th: Full scale, public testing of gsb-current. Bug fixes applied to svn, any binary packages rebuilt and uploaded to master server.
    • January 21st: Public release of gsb-2.20.3 stable. Advertising and drinking. Our svn trunk/ is branched to 2.20.x and frozen except for bugfixes and security updates.
    • January 22nd: svn trunk/ updated for current GNOME development version, and we begin to track GNOME changes as gsb-current.

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