2 include "8440head.php";
9 <font color="#931515" size="+3">COMP8440: Lab2 - choice of 5</font>
13 The aim of this lab is similar to the previous 'a2ps' lab, but you
14 will have a choice of 5 projects to investigate. The idea is to expose
15 you to a wider range of common FOSS project ideas.
17 <p>In this lab you will also need to create a patch against your
18 chosen project, and submit that patch to the <a
19 href="mailto:comp8440@fossd.anu.edu.au">comp8440@fossd.anu.edu.au</a>
20 mailing list. Then you should look for another students patch
21 submission for the same project apply their patch, and send back a
22 reply to them commenting on their patch.
24 <p>The 5 projects are:
29 <li>Battle for Wesnoth
34 The level of difficulty in building these projects varies quite a
35 lot. As a rough guide, the above list is approximately in order of
36 difficulty, with FreeCIV being the easiest and LibreOffice the
37 hardest. In order to maximize exposure of each students to as many
38 projects as possible, when a student runs into difficulties we will
39 often display their screen on the projector so we can discuss the
40 problem as a class, and try to come to a solution together.<p>
42 The level of difficulty is also heavily dependent on what method you
43 use to fetch the source code. If you are very inexperienced with
44 building FOSS packages, then the easiest approach will be to use the
45 package manager to download the sources. If you are more experienced,
46 then you should try to build the project using the latest development
47 version (downloaded using a source code management system).<p>
49 Note: Please read the <a href="building.php">build tips</a> page
50 carefully before you start!
52 <h3>Helping other students</h3>
54 Cooperation between developers is one of the cornerstones of FOSS
55 development. So please help out your fellow students if they are stuck
56 and you know what the problem is. If you think the problem is of wider
57 interest, then ask Bob or Andrew to display the students screen on the
60 <h3>Faster download</h3>
62 Some of the above project are very large, and downloading the source
63 code using a SCMS may take too long for this lab. For that reason we
64 have put a snapshot of some of the project trees in
65 /comp8440/sources. See the <a href="building.php">build tips</a> page
68 <h3>Things to think about</h3>
70 Here are some things to work out about the project you are building
73 <li>How active is development? How many people have contributed
74 changes in the last year?
75 <li>What method does the project use to customise itself to your
77 <li>How is the documentation for the project written?
78 <li>How does the project handle releases? Does it use branches?
79 <li>How does the project fit in with other projects? What does it
81 <li>How do the developers for the project communicate?
82 <li>How do you submit changes to the project?
85 <h3>Patch submission</h3>
87 Once you have successfully built the project, you should generate a
88 patch against it, and submit that patch to the comp8440 mailing list.
90 <p>To generate a patch, first make a code change of some sort. It is
91 not necessary for this to be a serious or substantial code change -
92 any small change will do for the purposes of this lab.
94 <p>Once you have made the change, you will need to generate the
95 patch. You can either use the 'diff' tool, or you can use the builtin
96 patch generation in a source code management tool if you used one to
99 <p>Your patch submission should meet the following criterion:
102 <li>You must have tested that your change works
103 <li>It should be in diff -up format
104 <li>The patch should be inline in the email, not sent as an attachment
105 <li>It should contain the diffstat output at the front
106 <li>It should contain an explanation of your changes
107 <li>It should have a clear subject, prefixed with "[PATCH]"
108 <li>It should say "Signed-off-by: YOUR EMAIL"
111 If you want to see some examples of patches, you might like to look at
112 the <a href="http://marc.info/?l=linux-kernel">Linux kernel mailing
113 list</a>, for messages starting with "[PATCH]"
115 <h3>Patch acceptance</h3>
117 After submitting a patch, wait for someone else in the lab to submit a
118 different patch for the same project. You should then examine their
119 patch, and try to apply it to your copy of the project. You will need
120 to use the 'patch' tool to do that.
122 <p>A typical patch command would be:
124 patch -p1 < somepatch.patch
127 <p>After examining and testing their patch, you should either accept
128 it or reject it by sending a reply to the person submitting the
129 patch. You should make sure your reply is CCd to the mailing list. In
130 your reply you should explain your acceptance or rejection of the
131 patch. If you reject their patch, then you should watch for a further
132 email from them fixing whatever problems you identified in their
133 patch. If the patch is now acceptable, you can reply saying that you
136 <h3>Lab continuation</h3>
138 Don't worry if you don't complete the work for this lab in the time
139 alotted. You can continue with this lab during the next lab session if
144 You may find some of the tips on the <a href="scm-tips.php">SCM
145 Tips</a> page useful for this lab.
147 <h1>MAKE SURE YOU BACKUP</h1>
149 Make sure you do a backup at the end of the lab, or you may lose all
152 <p><div align="center">
154 print " Last modified: ";
155 $last_modified = getlastmod();
156 print(date("j/m/Y, H:i", $last_modified));
161 include "8440tail.php";