GNU Development Resources

This page describes many of the development resources 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 tips for GNU maintainers and 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-pkgname@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 lists.gnu.org (mbox archives can be downloaded by HTTPS), 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 www.gnu.org. We very strongly recommend that GNU packages use https://www.gnu.org/software/pkgname 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 https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu, 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 https://alpha.gnu.org/gnu.

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.

platform-testers: Manual portability testing

Another useful option for pre-release testing is the platform-testers mailing list. Time permitting, the people on this list build pre-releases on a wide variety of platforms upon request. (Volunteers to handle testing requests are needed! Just subscribe to the list and start participating.)

In contrast to the Hydra tool described above, the platform-testers list works essentially by hand, so each method has its advantages and disadvantages. Also, the platform-testers crew has access to a wider variety of platforms and compilers than the Hydra setup.

So, if you have a pre-release, you can write to the mailing list, providing (1) the url to the tarball, (2) the planned date of the release, and (3) the email address to which build reports should be sent. The builds and reports are made by hand by the volunteers on the list.