A01NR_Introduction

Source Code Management

Contents

SourceForge and Subversion

The main website, www.netresponsibility.com, is mainly targeting the common end users. This means we try to avoid too geeky language and keep it simple. Developers on the other hand need a place to discuss, access and update the code. That place it SourceForge.net. The Net Responsibility project is found at http://www.sourceforge.net/projects/responsibility.

The version control system used is Subversion. Most Linux distributions already have the utility svn. There are also several graphical interfaces, such as RabbitVCS and RapidSVN. For Windows users, TortoiseSVN is available.

Get the trunk

The first thing you'll want it to checkout the trunk. This is the bleeding edge code, waiting to be released whenever considered stable enough. To download it, use the following command:

svn checkout https://responsibility.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/responsibility/trunk/

If using a graphical interface, look for something called "Checkout repository" or similar, then use the URL above.

Bug reports and Feature requests

We'll try to keep all bug reports in our bug tracker. If you stumble upon a bug that is not present in the bug tracker, please add it. Regular end users may report bugs and ask for help in the forum, but it's important for us to also have it in the bug tracker, since it will help us know whether it's taken care of or not.

The same thing goes for feature requests. Please help us update both the bug reports and feature requests by adding all relevant entries.

These two trackers together will serve as a kind of TODO list. If you're uncertain where to start with the coding, start looking through these trackers. If you find a bug or feature request that sound interesting, get on it. As these entries are taken care of, one may mark them as fixed.

Commit changes

To commit changes directly to the SVN repository, you'll need special privilegues. It's definitely not impossible to get them, but the first step is to provide patches. This is more or less the most common way of contributing to open source projects. Providing patches may be used to "gain trust" from the rest of the development team.

Creating patches are really easy and a good practice to learn. First download the trunk, and make the necessary changes. It's discouraged to move or deleting files, but you may add new files. Open up a terminal and get to root directory of the project (trunk root). Add all new files to the svn (if there are any), update and create a diff. These steps may look like this:

cd /path/to/trunk
svn add /path/to/the/added/file  #Only if required
svn update
svn diff > myPatch.diff

Take the newly created patch and attach it to a comment to the bug report or feature request that it takes care of. If no bug report or feature request is found for the specific issue you've treated, please create a new one. This makes it easier to manage the bugs and feature requests.