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Committer Guide The FreeBSD Documentation Project - $Date: 2000-07-08 15:32:00 $ + $Date: 2000-07-10 15:01:52 $ 1999 2000 The FreeBSD Documentation Project Welcome, committer, to the FreeBSD development team! The following docs are provided to orient you on doing CVS operations on the FreeBSD central repository machine. A basic familiarity with CVS is already assumed, although CVS reference information, tutorials, and FAQs can also be found at: http://www.cyclic.com/CVS/support Good luck, and welcome aboard! Administrative Details Main Repository Host freefall.FreeBSD.org International Crypto Repository Host internat.FreeBSD.org Login Methods &man.ssh.1; Main CVSROOT /home/ncvs International Crypto CVSROOT /home/cvs.crypt Main CVS Repository Meisters &a.jdp; and &a.peter; as well as &a.asami; for ports/ International Crypto CVS Repository Meister &a.markm; Mailing List cvs-committers@FreeBSD.org Noteworthy CVS Tags RELENG_3 (3.x-STABLE), RELENG_4 (4.x-STABLE), HEAD (-CURRENT) It is required that you use &man.ssh.1; or &man.telnet.1; with Kerberos 5 to connect to the repository hosts. These are generally more secure than plain &man.telnet.1; or &man.rlogin.1; since credential negotiation will always be encrypted. All traffic is encrypted by default with &man.ssh.1;. With utilities like &man.ssh-agent.1; and &man.scp.1; also available, &man.ssh.1; is also far more convenient. If you do not know anything about &man.ssh.1;, please see . CVS Operations CVS operations are usually done by logging into freefall, making sure the CVSROOT environment variable is set to /home/ncvs, and then doing the appropriate check-out/check-in operations. If you wish to add something which is wholly new (like new ports, contrib-ified sources, etc), a script called easy-import is also provided for making the process easier. It automatically adds the new module entry, does the appropriate thing with cvs import, etc. – just run it without arguments and it will prompt you for everything it needs to know. If you are familiar with remote CVS and consider yourself pretty studly with CVS in general, you can also do CVS operations directly from your own machine and local working sources. Just remember to set CVS_RSH to ssh so that you are using a relatively secure and reliable transport. If you have no idea what any of the above even means, on the other hand, then please stick with logging into freefall and applying your diffs with &man.patch.1;. If you need to use CVS add and delete operations in a manner that is effectively a mv operation, then a repository copy is in order rather than your CVS add and delete. In a repository copy, a CVS Meister will copy the file(s) to their new name and/or location and let you know when it is done. The purpose of a repository copy is to preserve file change history, or logs. We in the FreeBSD Project greatly value the change history CVS gives to the project. Conventions and Traditions The CVS Repository Meisters (Peter Wemm and John Polstra) are the owners of the CVS repository and are responsible for any and all direct modification of it for the purposes of cleanup or fixing some grievous abuse of CVS by a committer. No one else should attempt to touch the repository directly. Should you cause some repository accident, say a bad cvs import or tag operation, do not attempt to fix it yourself! Mail or call John or Peter immediately and report the problem to one of them instead. The only ones allowed to directly fiddle the repository bits are the repomeisters. Satoshi Asami is also a repomeister for the ports/ portion of the tree. Mark Murray is the repomeister for the International Crypto Repository in South Africa. If you are a new committer, your very first commit should be to add yourself to the developer's section (28.2) of the Handbook and remove yourself from the Additional Contributors section (19.6). Figuring out how to check the handbook out and add an entry for yourself is relatively easy but still remains a good first test of your CVS skills. If you can handle that one, you are probably going to be ok. Your second commit should be to add an entry for yourself to www/en/news/newsflash.sgml. Look for the other entries that look like A new committer and follow the format. Your next step should be to introduce yourself to the other committers, otherwise no one will have any idea who you are or what you are working on. You do not have to write a comprehensive biography, just write a paragraph or two about who you are and what you plan to be working on as a committer in FreeBSD. Email this to cvs-committers@FreeBSD.org and you will be on your way! Also, be sure to log into hub.FreeBSD.org and create a /var/forward/user (where user is your username) file containing the e-mail address where you want mail addressed to yourusername@FreeBSD.org to be forwarded. This includes all of the commit messages as well as any other mail addressed to cvs-committers@FreeBSD.org. Really large mailboxes which have taken up permanent residence on hub often get accidently truncated without warning, so forward it or read it and you will not lose it. All new committers also have a mentor assigned to them for the first few months. Your mentor is more or less responsible for explaining anything which is confusing to you and is also responsible for your actions during this initial period. If you make a bogus commit, it is only going to embarrass your mentor and you should probably make it a policy to pass at least your first few commits by your mentor before committing it to the repository. All commits should go to -CURRENT first before being merged to -STABLE. No major new features or high-risk modifications should be made to the -STABLE branch. Developer Relations If you are working directly on your own code or on code which is already well established as your responsibility, then there is probably little need to check with other committers before jumping in with a commit. If you see a bug in an area of the system which is clearly orphaned (and there are a few such areas, to our shame), the same applies. If, however, you are about to modify something which is clearly being actively maintained by someone else (and it is only by watching the cvs-committers mailing list that you can really get a feel for just what is and is not) then consider sending the change to them instead, just as you would have before becoming a committer. For ports, you should contact the listed MAINTAINER in the Makefile. For other parts of the repository, if you are unsure who the active maintainer might be, it may help to scan the output of cvs log to see who has committed changes in the past. &a.fenner; has written a nice shell script that can help determine who the active maintainer might be. It lists each person who has committed to a given file along with the number of commits each person has made. It can be found on freefall at ~fenner/bin/whodid. If your queries go unanswered or the committer otherwise indicates a lack of proprietary interest in the area affected, go ahead and commit it. If you are unsure about a commit for any reason at all, have it reviewed by -hackers before committing. Better to have it flamed then and there rather than when it is part of the CVS repository. If you do happen to commit something which results in controversy erupting, you may also wish to consider backing the change out again until the matter is settled. Remember – with CVS we can always change it back. GNATS The FreeBSD Project utilizes GNATS for tracking bugs and change requests. Be sure that if you commit a fix or suggestion found in a GNATS PR, you use edit-pr pr-number on freefall to close it. It is also considered nice if you take time to close any PRs associated with your commits, if appropriate. Your can also make use of &man.send-pr.1; yourself for proposing any change which you feel should probably be made, pending a more extensive peer-review first. You can find out more about GNATS at: http://www.cs.utah.edu/csinfo/texinfo/gnats/gnats.html http://www.FreeBSD.org/support.html http://www.FreeBSD.org/send-pr.html &man.send-pr.1; You can run a local copy of GNATS, and then integrate the FreeBSD GNATS tree in to it using CVSup. Then you can run GNATS commands locally, or use other interfaces, such as tkgnats. This lets you query the PR database without needing to be connected to the Internet. Using a local GNATS tree If you are not already downloading the GNATS tree, add this line to your supfile, and re-sup. gnats release=current prefix=/usr This will place the FreeBSD GNATS tree in /usr/gnats. You can use a refuse file to control which categories to receive. For example, to only receive docs PRs, put this line in /usr/local/etc/cvsup/sup/refuse The precise path depends on the *default base setting in your supfile. . gnats/[a-ce-z]* The rest of these examples assume you have only supped the docs category. Adjust them as necessary, depending on the categories you are synching. Install the GNATS port from ports/databases/gnats. This will place the various GNATS directories under $PREFIX/share/gnats. Symlink the GNATS directories you are supping under the version of GNATS you have installed. &prompt.root; cd /usr/local/share/gnats/gnats-db &prompt.root; ln -s /usr/gnats/docs Repeat as necessary, depending on how many GNATS categories you are synching. Update the GNATS categories file with these cageories. The file is $PREFIX/share/gnats/gnats-db/gnats-adm/categories. # This category is mandatory pending:Category for faulty PRs:gnats-admin: # # FreeBSD categories # docs:Documentation Bug:nik: Run $PREFIX/libexec/gnats/gen-index to recreate the GNATS index. The output has to be redirected to $PREFIX/share/gnats/gnats-db/gnats-adm/index. You can do this periodically from &man.cron.8;, or run &man.cvsup.1; from a shell script that does this as well. &prompt.root; /usr/local/libexec/gnats/gen-index \ > /usr/local/share/gnats/gnats-db/gnats-adm/index Test the configuration by querying the PR database. This command shows open docs PRs. &prompt.root; query-pr -c docs -s open Other interfaces, like ports/databases/tkgnats should also work nicely. Pick a PR and close it. This procedure only works to allow you to view and query the PRs locally. To edit or close them you will still have to log in to freefall and do it from there. Who's Who Besides Peter Wemm and John Polstra, the repository meisters, there are other FreeBSD project members whom you will probably get to know in your role as a committer. Briefly, and by no means all-inclusively, these are: &a.asami; Satoshi is the Ports Wraith, meaning that he has ultimate authority over any modifications to the ports collection or the ports skeleton makefiles. He is also the one responsible for administering ports freezes before the releases. &a.bde; Bruce is the Obersturmbahnfuhrer of the Style Police. When you do a commit that could have been done better, Bruce will be there to tell you. Be thankful that someone is. &a.dg; David is our principal architect and overseer of the VM system. If you have a VM system change in mind, coordinate it with David. Should you become locked in a bitter, intractable dispute with some other committer over a proposed change (which does not happen very often, thankfully) then an appeal to David to put on his P.A. hat and make a final decision might be necessary. &a.jkh; Jordan is the release engineer. He is responsible for setting release deadlines and controlling the release process. During code freezes, he also has final authority on all changes to the system for whichever branch is pending release status. If there is something you want merged from -CURRENT to -STABLE (whatever values those may have at any given time), he is also the one to talk to about it. &a.markm; Mark is the CVS repository meister for the international crypto repository kept on internat.FreeBSD.org in South Africa. Mark also oversees most of the crypto code; if you have any crypto updates, please ask Mark first. &a.steve; Steve is the unofficial maintainer of src/bin. If you have something significant you'd like to do there, you should probably coordinate it with Steve first. He is also a Problem Report-meister, along with &a.phk;. &a.brian; Official maintainer of /usr/bin/ppp and LPD. &a.wollman; If you need advice on obscure network internals or aren't sure of some potential change to the networking subsystem you have in mind, Garrett is someone to talk to. SSH Quick-Start Guide Update and install one of the SSH ports. In general, you will probably want to get OpenSSH from the port in /usr/ports/security/openssh. You may also wish to check out the original ssh1 in /usr/ports/security/ssh, but make certain you pay attention to its license. Note that both of these ports cannot be installed at the same time. If you do not wish to to type your password in every time you use &man.ssh.1;, and you use RSA keys to authenticate, &man.ssh-agent.1; is there for your convenience. If you want to use &man.ssh-agent.1;, make sure that you run it before running other applications. X users, for example, usually do this from their .xsession or .xinitrc file. See &man.ssh-agent.1; for details. Generate a key pair using &man.ssh-keygen.1;. The key pair will wind up in the $HOME/.ssh directory. Send your public key ($HOME/.ssh/identity.pub) to the person setting you up as a committer so it can be put into your authorized_keys file in your home directory on freefall (i.e. $HOME/.ssh/authorized_keys). Now you should be able to use &man.ssh-add.1; for authentication once per session. This will prompt you for your private key's pass phrase, and then store it in your authentication agent (&man.ssh-agent.1;). If you no longer wish to have your key stored in the agent, issuing ssh-add -d will remove it. Test by doing something such as ssh freefall.FreeBSD.org ls /usr. For more information, see /usr/ports/security/openssh, &man.ssh.1;, &man.ssh-add.1;, &man.ssh-agent.1;, &man.ssh-keygen.1;, and &man.scp.1;. The FreeBSD Committers' Big List of Rules Respect other committers. Discuss any significant change before committing. Respect existing maintainers if listed in the (MAINTAINER field in Makefile or in the MAINTAINER file in the top-level directory). Never touch the repository directly. Ask a Repomeister. Any disputed change must be backed out pending resolution of the dispute if requested by a maintainer or the Principal Architect. Security related changes may override a maintainer's wishes at the Security Officer's discretion. Changes go to -CURRENT before -STABLE unless specifically permitted by the release engineer or unless they're not applicable to -CURRENT. Any non-trivial or non-urgent change which is applicable should also be allowed to sit in -CURRENT for at least 3 days before merging so that it can be given sufficient testing. The release engineer has the same authority over the -STABLE branch as outlined for the Principal Architect in rule #5. Don't fight in public with other committers; it looks bad. If you must strongly disagree about something, do so only in private. Respect all code freezes and read the committers mailing list on a timely basis so you know when a code freeze is in effect. When in doubt on any procedure, ask first! Test your changes before committing them. As noted, breaking some of these rules can be grounds for suspension or, upon repeated offense, permanent removal of commit privileges. Three or more members of core, or the Principal Architect and another member of core acting in unison, have the power to temporarily suspend commit privileges until -core as a whole has the chance to review the issue. In case of an emergency (a committer doing damage to the repository), a temporary suspension may also be done by the repository meisters or any other member of core who may happen to be awake at the time. Only core as a whole has the authority to suspend commit privileges for any significant length of time or to remove them permanently, the latter generally only being done after consultation with committers. This rule does not exist to set core up as a bunch of cruel dictators who can dispose of committers as casually as empty soda cans, but to give the project a kind of safety fuse. If someone is seriously out of control, it's important to be able to deal with this immediately rather than be paralyzed by debate. In all cases, a committer whose privileges are suspended or revoked is entitled to a hearing, the total duration of the suspension being determined at that time. A committer whose privileges are suspended may also request a review of the decision after 30 days and every 30 days thereafter (unless the total suspension period is less than 30 days). A committer whose privileges have been revoked entirely may request a review after a period of 6 months have elapsed. This review policy is strictly informal and, in all cases, core reserves the right to either act on or disregard requests for review if they feel their original decision to be the right one. In all other aspects of project operation, core is a subset of committers and is bound by the same rules. Just because someone is in core doesn't mean that they have special dispensation to step outside of any of the lines painted here; core's special powers only kick in when it acts as a group, not on an individual basis. As individuals, we are all committers first and core second. Details Respect other committers. This means that you need to treat other committers as the peer-group developers that they are. Despite our occasional attempts to prove the contrary, one doesn't get into committers by being stupid and nothing rankles more than being treated that way by one of your peers. Whether we always feel respect for one another or not (and everyone has off days), we still have to treat other committers with respect at all times or the whole team structure rapidly breaks down. Being able to work together long term is this project's greatest asset, one far more important than any set of changes to the code, and turning arguments about code into issues that affect our long-term ability to work harmoniously together is just not worth the trade-off by any conceivable stretch of the imagination. To comply with this rule, don't send email when you're angry or otherwise behave in a manner which is likely to strike others as needlessly confrontational. First calm down, then think about how to communicate in the most effective fashion for convincing the other person(s) that your side of the argument is correct, don't just blow off some steam so you can feel better in the short term at the cost of a long-term flame war. Not only is this very bad energy economics, but repeated displays of public aggression which impair our ability to work well together will be dealt with severely by the project leadership and may result in suspension or termination of your commit privileges. That's never an option which the project's leadership enjoys in the slightest, but unity comes first. No amount of code or good advice is worth trading that away. Discuss any significant change before committing. The CVS repository is not where changes should be initially submitted for correctness or argued over, that should happen first in the mailing lists and then committed only once something resembling consensus has been reached. This doesn't mean that you have to ask permission before correcting every obvious syntax error or man page misspelling, simply that you should try to develop a feel for when a proposed change isn't quite such a no-brainer and requires some feedback first. People really don't mind sweeping changes if the result is something clearly better than what they had before, they just don't like being surprised by those changes. The very best way of making sure that you're on the right track is to have your code reviewed by one or more other committers. When in doubt, ask for review! Respect existing maintainers if listed. Many parts of FreeBSD aren't owned in the sense that any specific individual will jump up and yell if you commit a change to their area, but it still pays to check first. One convention we use is to put a maintainer line in the Makefile for any package or subtree which is being actively maintained by one or more people; see http://www.FreeBSD.org/handbook/policies.html for documentation on this. Where sections of code have several maintainers, commits to affected areas by one maintainer need to be reviewed by at least one other maintainer. In cases where the maintainer-ship of something isn't clear, you can also look at the CVS logs for the file(s) in question and see if someone has been working recently or predominantly in that area. Other areas of FreeBSD fall under the control of someone who manages an overall category of FreeBSD evolution, such as internationalization or networking. See http://www.FreeBSD.org/handbook/staff-who.html for more information on this. Never touch the repository directly. Ask a Repomeister. This is pretty clear - you're not allowed to make direct modifications to the CVS repository, period. In case of difficulty, ask one of the repository meisters by sending mail to cvs@FreeBSD.org and simply wait for them to fix the problem and get back to you. Do not attempt to fix the problem yourself! If you're thinking about putting down a tag or doing a new import of code on a vendor branch, you might also find it useful to ask for advice first. A lot of people get this wrong the first few times and the consequences are expensive in terms of files touched and angry CVSup/CTM folks who are suddenly getting a lot of changes sent over unnecessarily. Any disputed change must be backed out pending resolution of the dispute if requested by a maintainer or the Principal Architect. Security related changes may override a maintainer's wishes at the Security Officer's discretion. This may be hard to swallow in times of conflict (when each side is convinced that they're in the right, of course) but CVS makes it unnecessary to have an ongoing dispute raging when it's far easier to simply reverse the disputed change, get everyone calmed down again and then try and figure out how best to proceed. If the change turns out to be the best thing after all, it can be easily brought back. If it turns out not to be, then the users didn't have to live with the bogus change in the tree while everyone was busily debating its merits. People very very rarely call for back-outs in the repository since discussion generally exposes bad or controversial changes before the commit even happens, but on such rare occasions the back-out should be done without argument so that we can get immediately on to the topic of figuring out whether it was bogus or not. Changes go to -CURRENT before -STABLE unless specifically permitted by the release engineer or unless they're not applicable to -CURRENT. Any non-trivial or non-urgent change which is applicable should also be allowed to sit in -CURRENT for at least 3 days before merging so that it can be given sufficient testing. The release engineer has the same authority over the -STABLE branch as outlined in rule #5. This is another don't argue about it issue since it's the release engineer who is ultimately responsible (and gets beaten up) if a change turns out to be bad. Please respect this and give the release engineer your full cooperation when it comes to the -STABLE branch. The management of -STABLE may frequently seem to be overly conservative to the casual observer, but also bear in mind the fact that conservatism is supposed to be the hallmark of -STABLE and different rules apply there than in -CURRENT. There's also really no point in having -CURRENT be a testing ground if changes are merged over to -STABLE immediately. Changes need a chance to be tested by the -CURRENT developers, so allow some time to elapse before merging unless the -STABLE fix is critical, time sensitive or so obvious as to make further testing unnecessary (spelling fixes to manpages, obvious bug/typo fixes, etc.) In other words, apply common sense. Don't fight in public with other committers; it looks bad. If you must strongly disagree about something, do so only in private. This project has a public image to uphold and that image is very important to all of us, especially if we are to continue to attract new members. There will be occasions when, despite everyone's very best attempts at self-control, tempers are lost and angry words are exchanged, and the best we can do is try and minimize the effects of this until everyone has cooled back down. That means that you should not air your angry words in public and you should not forward private correspondence to public mailing lists or aliases. What people say one-to-one is often much less sugar-coated than what they would say in public, and such communications therefore have no place there - they only serve to inflame an already bad situation. If the person sending you a flame-o-gram at least had the grace to send it privately, then have the grace to keep it private yourself. If you feel you are being unfairly treated by another developer, and it is causing you anguish, bring the matter up with core rather than taking it public. We will do our best to play peace makers and get things back to sanity. In cases where the dispute involves a change to the codebase and the participants do not appear to be reaching an amicable agreement, core may appoint a mutually-agreeable 3rd party to resolve the dispute. All parties involved must then agree to be bound by the decision reached by this 3rd party. Respect all code freezes and read the committers mailing list on a timely basis so you know when they are. Committing changes during a code freeze is a really big mistake and committers are expected to keep up-to-date on what's going on before jumping in after a long absence and committing 10 megabytes worth of accumulated stuff. People who abuse this on a regular basis will have their commit privileges suspended until they get back from the FreeBSD Happy Reeducation Camp we run in Greenland. When in doubt on any procedure, ask first! Many mistakes are made because someone is in a hurry and just assumes they know the right way of doing something. If you have not done it before, chances are good that you do not actually know the way we do things and really need to ask first or you are going to completely embarrass yourself in public. There's no shame in asking how in the heck do I do this? We already know you are an intelligent person; otherwise, you would not be a committer. Test your changes before committing them. This may sound obvious, but if it really were so obvious then we probably wouldn't see so many cases of people clearly not doing this. If your changes are to the kernel, make sure you can still compile both GENERIC and LINT. If your changes are anywhere else, make sure you can still make world. If your changes are to a branch, make sure your testing occurs with a machine which is running that code. If you have a change which also may break another architecture, be sure and test on all supported architectures. Currently, this is only the x86 and the alpha so it's pretty easy to do. If you need to test on the AXP, your account on beast.FreeBSD.org will let you compile and test alpha binaries/kernels/etc. As other architectures are added to the FreeBSD supported platforms list, the appropriate shared testing resources will be made available. Other Suggestions When committing documentation changes, use a spell checker before committing. :) For all SGML docs, you should also verify that your formatting directives are correct by running make lint. For all on-line manual pages, run manck (from ports) over the man page to verify the all of the cross references and file references are correct and that the man page has all of the appropriate MLINKs installed. Do not mix style fixes with new functionality. A style fix is any change which does not modify the functionality of the code. Mixing the changes obfuscates the functionality change when using cvs diff, which can hide any new bugs. Do not include whitespace changes with content changes in commits to doc/ or www/. The extra clutter in the diffs makes the translators' job much more difficult. Instead, make any style or whitespace changes in seperate commits that are clearly labeled as such in the commit message. Ports Specific FAQ Importing a New Port How do I import a new port? First, please read the section about repository copy. The easiest way to import a new port is to use the easy-import script on freefall. It will ask you some questions and import the port in the directory you specify. It will also add an entry to the CVSROOT/modules file. It was written by &a.joerg; so please send mail to him if you have questions about easy-import. One thing it will not do for you is add the port to the parent (category) Makefile. You have to do that yourself. Any other things I need to know when I import a new port? Check the port, preferably to make sure it compiles and packages correctly. This is the recommended sequence: &prompt.root; make install &prompt.root; make package &prompt.root; make deinstall &prompt.root; pkg_add package you built above &prompt.root; make deinstall &prompt.root; make reinstall &prompt.root; make package The - Porters + Porters Handbook contains more detailed instructions. Use &man.portlint.1; to check the syntax of the port. You don't necessarily have to eliminate all warnings but make sure you have fixed the simple ones. If the port came from a submitter who has not contributed to the project before, add that person's name to the Handbook's Additional Contributors section. Close the PR if the port came in as a PR. To close a PR, just do edit-pr PR# on freefall and change the state from open to closed. You will be asked to enter a log message and then you are done. Repository Copies When do we need a repository copy? When you want to import a port that is related to any port that is already in the tree in a separate directory, please send mail to the ports manager asking about it. Here related means it is a different version or a slightly modified version. Examples are print/ghostscript* (different versions) and x11-wm/windowmaker* (English-only and internationalized version). Another example is when a port is moved from one subdirectory to another, or when you want to change the name of a directory because the author(s) renamed their software even though it is a descendant of a port already in a tree. When do we not need a repository copy? When there is no history to preserve. If a port is imported into a wrong category and is moved immediately, it suffices to simply cvs remove the old one and cvs import the new one. What do I need to do? Send mail to the ports manager, who will do a copy from the old location/name to the new location/name. You will then get a notice, at which point you are expected to perform the following: cvs remove the old port (if necessary) Adjust the parent (category) Makefile Update CVSROOT/modules If other ports depend on the updated port, change their Makefiles' dependency lines If the port changed categories, modify the CATEGORIES line of the port's Makefile accordingly Ports Freeze What is a ports freeze? Before a release, it is necessary to restrict commits to the ports tree for a short period of time while the packages and the release itself are being built. This is to ensure consistency among the various parts of the release, and is called the ports freeze. How long is a ports freeze? Usually two to three days. What does it mean to me? During the ports freeze, you are not allowed to commit anything to the tree without explicit approval from the ports manager. Explicit approval here means either of the following: You asked the ports manager and got a reply saying, Go ahead and commit it. The ports manager sent a mail to you or the mailing lists during the ports freeze pointing out that the port is broken and has to be fixed. Note that you do not have implicit permission to fix a port during the freeze just because it is broken. How do I know when the ports freeze starts? The ports manager will send out warning messages to the freebsd-ports@FreeBSD.org and cvs-committers@FreeBSD.org mailing lists announcing the start of the impending release, usually two or three weeks in advance. The exact starting time will not be determined until a few days before the actual release. This is because the ports freeze has to be synchronized with the release, and it is usually not known until then when exactly the release will be rolled. When the freeze starts, there will be another announcement to the cvs-committers@FreeBSD.org list, of course. How do I know when the ports freeze ends? A few hours after the release, the ports manager will send out a mail to the freebsd-ports@FreeBSD.org and cvs-committers@FreeBSD.org mailing lists announcing the end of the ports freeze. Note that the release being cut does not automatically end the freeze. We have to make sure there will not be any last minute snafus that result in an immediate re-rolling of the release. Miscellaneous Questions How do I know if my port is building correctly or not? First, go check http://bento.FreeBSD.org/~asami/errorlogs/. There you will find error logs from the latest package building runs on 3-stable and 4-current. However, just because the port doesn't show up there doesn't mean it's building correctly. (One of the dependencies may have failed, for instance.) Here are the relevant directories on bento, so feel free to dig around. /a/asami/portbuild/3/errors error logs from latest 3-stable run /logs all logs from latest 3-stable run /packages packages from latest 3-stable run /bak/errors error logs from last complete 3-stable run /bak/logs all logs from last complete 3-stable run /bak/packages packages from last complete 3-stable run /4/errors error logs from latest 4-current run /logs all logs from latest 4-current run /packages packages from latest 4-current run /bak/errors error logs from last complete 4-current run /bak/logs all logs from last complete 4-current run /bak/packages packages from last complete 4-current run Basically, if the port shows up in packages, or it is in logs but not in errors, it built fine. (The errors directories are what you get from the web page.) I added a new port. Do I need to add it to the INDEX? No. The ports manager will regenerate the INDEX and commit it every few days. Are there any other files I'm not allowed to touch? Any file directly under ports/, or any file under a subdirectory that starts with an uppercase letter (Mk/, Tools/, etc.). In particular, the ports manager is very protective of ports/Mk/bsd.port*.mk so don't commit changes to those files unless you want to face his wra(i)th. Miscellaneous Questions Why are trivial or cosmetic changes to files on a vendor branch a bad idea? The RCS file format is quite braindead and certain operations to achieve things for CVS are hideously expensive for the repository. Making changes to files on a vendor branch, thereby pulling the file off that branch, is one example of this. Suppose you have a file which was first imported on a vendor branch, and was then re-imported three times (still on the vendor branch) as the vendor makes updates to the file. 1.1.1.1 vendor import 1.1.1.2 vendor import, +1000, -500 lines 1.1.1.3 vendor import, +2000, -500 lines 1.1.1.4 vendor import, +1000, -1000 lines Now suppose that one of the FreeBSD committers makes a one line change to this file, causing it to go to version 1.2. This causes it to leave the branch, resulting in 4,001 lines being added to the file's history, and 2,001 lines being deleted. This is because the 1.2 delta is stored relative to 1.1.1.1, not 1.1.1.4, and so the entire vendor history is duplicated in the 1.2 delta. Now, repeat this for 2000 files in a large directory, it adds up a lot. This is why we have such hands off policies for src/contrib and other things that track the vendor releases. This is why typo fixes in man pages and spelling corrections are so strongly discouraged for vendor code. How do I add a new file to a CVS branch? To add a file onto a branch, simply checkout or update to the branch you want to add to and then add the file using cvs add as you normally would. For example, if you wanted to MFC the file src/sys/alpha/include/smp.h from HEAD to RELENG_4 and it does not exist in RELENG_4 yet, you would use the following steps: MFC'ing a New File &prompt.user; cd sys/alpha/include &prompt.user; cvs update -rRELENG_4 cvs update: Updating . U clockvar.h U console.h ... &prompt.user; cvs update -kk -Ap smp.h > smp.h =================================================================== Checking out smp.h RCS: /usr/cvs/src/sys/alpha/include/smp.h,v VERS: 1.1 *************** &prompt.user; cvs add smp.h cvs add: scheduling file `smp.h' for addition on branch `RELENG_4' cvs add: use 'cvs commit' to add this file permanently &prompt.user; cvs commit
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Committer Guide The FreeBSD Documentation Project - $Date: 2000-07-08 15:32:00 $ + $Date: 2000-07-10 15:01:52 $ 1999 2000 The FreeBSD Documentation Project Welcome, committer, to the FreeBSD development team! The following docs are provided to orient you on doing CVS operations on the FreeBSD central repository machine. A basic familiarity with CVS is already assumed, although CVS reference information, tutorials, and FAQs can also be found at: http://www.cyclic.com/CVS/support Good luck, and welcome aboard! Administrative Details Main Repository Host freefall.FreeBSD.org International Crypto Repository Host internat.FreeBSD.org Login Methods &man.ssh.1; Main CVSROOT /home/ncvs International Crypto CVSROOT /home/cvs.crypt Main CVS Repository Meisters &a.jdp; and &a.peter; as well as &a.asami; for ports/ International Crypto CVS Repository Meister &a.markm; Mailing List cvs-committers@FreeBSD.org Noteworthy CVS Tags RELENG_3 (3.x-STABLE), RELENG_4 (4.x-STABLE), HEAD (-CURRENT) It is required that you use &man.ssh.1; or &man.telnet.1; with Kerberos 5 to connect to the repository hosts. These are generally more secure than plain &man.telnet.1; or &man.rlogin.1; since credential negotiation will always be encrypted. All traffic is encrypted by default with &man.ssh.1;. With utilities like &man.ssh-agent.1; and &man.scp.1; also available, &man.ssh.1; is also far more convenient. If you do not know anything about &man.ssh.1;, please see . CVS Operations CVS operations are usually done by logging into freefall, making sure the CVSROOT environment variable is set to /home/ncvs, and then doing the appropriate check-out/check-in operations. If you wish to add something which is wholly new (like new ports, contrib-ified sources, etc), a script called easy-import is also provided for making the process easier. It automatically adds the new module entry, does the appropriate thing with cvs import, etc. – just run it without arguments and it will prompt you for everything it needs to know. If you are familiar with remote CVS and consider yourself pretty studly with CVS in general, you can also do CVS operations directly from your own machine and local working sources. Just remember to set CVS_RSH to ssh so that you are using a relatively secure and reliable transport. If you have no idea what any of the above even means, on the other hand, then please stick with logging into freefall and applying your diffs with &man.patch.1;. If you need to use CVS add and delete operations in a manner that is effectively a mv operation, then a repository copy is in order rather than your CVS add and delete. In a repository copy, a CVS Meister will copy the file(s) to their new name and/or location and let you know when it is done. The purpose of a repository copy is to preserve file change history, or logs. We in the FreeBSD Project greatly value the change history CVS gives to the project. Conventions and Traditions The CVS Repository Meisters (Peter Wemm and John Polstra) are the owners of the CVS repository and are responsible for any and all direct modification of it for the purposes of cleanup or fixing some grievous abuse of CVS by a committer. No one else should attempt to touch the repository directly. Should you cause some repository accident, say a bad cvs import or tag operation, do not attempt to fix it yourself! Mail or call John or Peter immediately and report the problem to one of them instead. The only ones allowed to directly fiddle the repository bits are the repomeisters. Satoshi Asami is also a repomeister for the ports/ portion of the tree. Mark Murray is the repomeister for the International Crypto Repository in South Africa. If you are a new committer, your very first commit should be to add yourself to the developer's section (28.2) of the Handbook and remove yourself from the Additional Contributors section (19.6). Figuring out how to check the handbook out and add an entry for yourself is relatively easy but still remains a good first test of your CVS skills. If you can handle that one, you are probably going to be ok. Your second commit should be to add an entry for yourself to www/en/news/newsflash.sgml. Look for the other entries that look like A new committer and follow the format. Your next step should be to introduce yourself to the other committers, otherwise no one will have any idea who you are or what you are working on. You do not have to write a comprehensive biography, just write a paragraph or two about who you are and what you plan to be working on as a committer in FreeBSD. Email this to cvs-committers@FreeBSD.org and you will be on your way! Also, be sure to log into hub.FreeBSD.org and create a /var/forward/user (where user is your username) file containing the e-mail address where you want mail addressed to yourusername@FreeBSD.org to be forwarded. This includes all of the commit messages as well as any other mail addressed to cvs-committers@FreeBSD.org. Really large mailboxes which have taken up permanent residence on hub often get accidently truncated without warning, so forward it or read it and you will not lose it. All new committers also have a mentor assigned to them for the first few months. Your mentor is more or less responsible for explaining anything which is confusing to you and is also responsible for your actions during this initial period. If you make a bogus commit, it is only going to embarrass your mentor and you should probably make it a policy to pass at least your first few commits by your mentor before committing it to the repository. All commits should go to -CURRENT first before being merged to -STABLE. No major new features or high-risk modifications should be made to the -STABLE branch. Developer Relations If you are working directly on your own code or on code which is already well established as your responsibility, then there is probably little need to check with other committers before jumping in with a commit. If you see a bug in an area of the system which is clearly orphaned (and there are a few such areas, to our shame), the same applies. If, however, you are about to modify something which is clearly being actively maintained by someone else (and it is only by watching the cvs-committers mailing list that you can really get a feel for just what is and is not) then consider sending the change to them instead, just as you would have before becoming a committer. For ports, you should contact the listed MAINTAINER in the Makefile. For other parts of the repository, if you are unsure who the active maintainer might be, it may help to scan the output of cvs log to see who has committed changes in the past. &a.fenner; has written a nice shell script that can help determine who the active maintainer might be. It lists each person who has committed to a given file along with the number of commits each person has made. It can be found on freefall at ~fenner/bin/whodid. If your queries go unanswered or the committer otherwise indicates a lack of proprietary interest in the area affected, go ahead and commit it. If you are unsure about a commit for any reason at all, have it reviewed by -hackers before committing. Better to have it flamed then and there rather than when it is part of the CVS repository. If you do happen to commit something which results in controversy erupting, you may also wish to consider backing the change out again until the matter is settled. Remember – with CVS we can always change it back. GNATS The FreeBSD Project utilizes GNATS for tracking bugs and change requests. Be sure that if you commit a fix or suggestion found in a GNATS PR, you use edit-pr pr-number on freefall to close it. It is also considered nice if you take time to close any PRs associated with your commits, if appropriate. Your can also make use of &man.send-pr.1; yourself for proposing any change which you feel should probably be made, pending a more extensive peer-review first. You can find out more about GNATS at: http://www.cs.utah.edu/csinfo/texinfo/gnats/gnats.html http://www.FreeBSD.org/support.html http://www.FreeBSD.org/send-pr.html &man.send-pr.1; You can run a local copy of GNATS, and then integrate the FreeBSD GNATS tree in to it using CVSup. Then you can run GNATS commands locally, or use other interfaces, such as tkgnats. This lets you query the PR database without needing to be connected to the Internet. Using a local GNATS tree If you are not already downloading the GNATS tree, add this line to your supfile, and re-sup. gnats release=current prefix=/usr This will place the FreeBSD GNATS tree in /usr/gnats. You can use a refuse file to control which categories to receive. For example, to only receive docs PRs, put this line in /usr/local/etc/cvsup/sup/refuse The precise path depends on the *default base setting in your supfile. . gnats/[a-ce-z]* The rest of these examples assume you have only supped the docs category. Adjust them as necessary, depending on the categories you are synching. Install the GNATS port from ports/databases/gnats. This will place the various GNATS directories under $PREFIX/share/gnats. Symlink the GNATS directories you are supping under the version of GNATS you have installed. &prompt.root; cd /usr/local/share/gnats/gnats-db &prompt.root; ln -s /usr/gnats/docs Repeat as necessary, depending on how many GNATS categories you are synching. Update the GNATS categories file with these cageories. The file is $PREFIX/share/gnats/gnats-db/gnats-adm/categories. # This category is mandatory pending:Category for faulty PRs:gnats-admin: # # FreeBSD categories # docs:Documentation Bug:nik: Run $PREFIX/libexec/gnats/gen-index to recreate the GNATS index. The output has to be redirected to $PREFIX/share/gnats/gnats-db/gnats-adm/index. You can do this periodically from &man.cron.8;, or run &man.cvsup.1; from a shell script that does this as well. &prompt.root; /usr/local/libexec/gnats/gen-index \ > /usr/local/share/gnats/gnats-db/gnats-adm/index Test the configuration by querying the PR database. This command shows open docs PRs. &prompt.root; query-pr -c docs -s open Other interfaces, like ports/databases/tkgnats should also work nicely. Pick a PR and close it. This procedure only works to allow you to view and query the PRs locally. To edit or close them you will still have to log in to freefall and do it from there. Who's Who Besides Peter Wemm and John Polstra, the repository meisters, there are other FreeBSD project members whom you will probably get to know in your role as a committer. Briefly, and by no means all-inclusively, these are: &a.asami; Satoshi is the Ports Wraith, meaning that he has ultimate authority over any modifications to the ports collection or the ports skeleton makefiles. He is also the one responsible for administering ports freezes before the releases. &a.bde; Bruce is the Obersturmbahnfuhrer of the Style Police. When you do a commit that could have been done better, Bruce will be there to tell you. Be thankful that someone is. &a.dg; David is our principal architect and overseer of the VM system. If you have a VM system change in mind, coordinate it with David. Should you become locked in a bitter, intractable dispute with some other committer over a proposed change (which does not happen very often, thankfully) then an appeal to David to put on his P.A. hat and make a final decision might be necessary. &a.jkh; Jordan is the release engineer. He is responsible for setting release deadlines and controlling the release process. During code freezes, he also has final authority on all changes to the system for whichever branch is pending release status. If there is something you want merged from -CURRENT to -STABLE (whatever values those may have at any given time), he is also the one to talk to about it. &a.markm; Mark is the CVS repository meister for the international crypto repository kept on internat.FreeBSD.org in South Africa. Mark also oversees most of the crypto code; if you have any crypto updates, please ask Mark first. &a.steve; Steve is the unofficial maintainer of src/bin. If you have something significant you'd like to do there, you should probably coordinate it with Steve first. He is also a Problem Report-meister, along with &a.phk;. &a.brian; Official maintainer of /usr/bin/ppp and LPD. &a.wollman; If you need advice on obscure network internals or aren't sure of some potential change to the networking subsystem you have in mind, Garrett is someone to talk to. SSH Quick-Start Guide Update and install one of the SSH ports. In general, you will probably want to get OpenSSH from the port in /usr/ports/security/openssh. You may also wish to check out the original ssh1 in /usr/ports/security/ssh, but make certain you pay attention to its license. Note that both of these ports cannot be installed at the same time. If you do not wish to to type your password in every time you use &man.ssh.1;, and you use RSA keys to authenticate, &man.ssh-agent.1; is there for your convenience. If you want to use &man.ssh-agent.1;, make sure that you run it before running other applications. X users, for example, usually do this from their .xsession or .xinitrc file. See &man.ssh-agent.1; for details. Generate a key pair using &man.ssh-keygen.1;. The key pair will wind up in the $HOME/.ssh directory. Send your public key ($HOME/.ssh/identity.pub) to the person setting you up as a committer so it can be put into your authorized_keys file in your home directory on freefall (i.e. $HOME/.ssh/authorized_keys). Now you should be able to use &man.ssh-add.1; for authentication once per session. This will prompt you for your private key's pass phrase, and then store it in your authentication agent (&man.ssh-agent.1;). If you no longer wish to have your key stored in the agent, issuing ssh-add -d will remove it. Test by doing something such as ssh freefall.FreeBSD.org ls /usr. For more information, see /usr/ports/security/openssh, &man.ssh.1;, &man.ssh-add.1;, &man.ssh-agent.1;, &man.ssh-keygen.1;, and &man.scp.1;. The FreeBSD Committers' Big List of Rules Respect other committers. Discuss any significant change before committing. Respect existing maintainers if listed in the (MAINTAINER field in Makefile or in the MAINTAINER file in the top-level directory). Never touch the repository directly. Ask a Repomeister. Any disputed change must be backed out pending resolution of the dispute if requested by a maintainer or the Principal Architect. Security related changes may override a maintainer's wishes at the Security Officer's discretion. Changes go to -CURRENT before -STABLE unless specifically permitted by the release engineer or unless they're not applicable to -CURRENT. Any non-trivial or non-urgent change which is applicable should also be allowed to sit in -CURRENT for at least 3 days before merging so that it can be given sufficient testing. The release engineer has the same authority over the -STABLE branch as outlined for the Principal Architect in rule #5. Don't fight in public with other committers; it looks bad. If you must strongly disagree about something, do so only in private. Respect all code freezes and read the committers mailing list on a timely basis so you know when a code freeze is in effect. When in doubt on any procedure, ask first! Test your changes before committing them. As noted, breaking some of these rules can be grounds for suspension or, upon repeated offense, permanent removal of commit privileges. Three or more members of core, or the Principal Architect and another member of core acting in unison, have the power to temporarily suspend commit privileges until -core as a whole has the chance to review the issue. In case of an emergency (a committer doing damage to the repository), a temporary suspension may also be done by the repository meisters or any other member of core who may happen to be awake at the time. Only core as a whole has the authority to suspend commit privileges for any significant length of time or to remove them permanently, the latter generally only being done after consultation with committers. This rule does not exist to set core up as a bunch of cruel dictators who can dispose of committers as casually as empty soda cans, but to give the project a kind of safety fuse. If someone is seriously out of control, it's important to be able to deal with this immediately rather than be paralyzed by debate. In all cases, a committer whose privileges are suspended or revoked is entitled to a hearing, the total duration of the suspension being determined at that time. A committer whose privileges are suspended may also request a review of the decision after 30 days and every 30 days thereafter (unless the total suspension period is less than 30 days). A committer whose privileges have been revoked entirely may request a review after a period of 6 months have elapsed. This review policy is strictly informal and, in all cases, core reserves the right to either act on or disregard requests for review if they feel their original decision to be the right one. In all other aspects of project operation, core is a subset of committers and is bound by the same rules. Just because someone is in core doesn't mean that they have special dispensation to step outside of any of the lines painted here; core's special powers only kick in when it acts as a group, not on an individual basis. As individuals, we are all committers first and core second. Details Respect other committers. This means that you need to treat other committers as the peer-group developers that they are. Despite our occasional attempts to prove the contrary, one doesn't get into committers by being stupid and nothing rankles more than being treated that way by one of your peers. Whether we always feel respect for one another or not (and everyone has off days), we still have to treat other committers with respect at all times or the whole team structure rapidly breaks down. Being able to work together long term is this project's greatest asset, one far more important than any set of changes to the code, and turning arguments about code into issues that affect our long-term ability to work harmoniously together is just not worth the trade-off by any conceivable stretch of the imagination. To comply with this rule, don't send email when you're angry or otherwise behave in a manner which is likely to strike others as needlessly confrontational. First calm down, then think about how to communicate in the most effective fashion for convincing the other person(s) that your side of the argument is correct, don't just blow off some steam so you can feel better in the short term at the cost of a long-term flame war. Not only is this very bad energy economics, but repeated displays of public aggression which impair our ability to work well together will be dealt with severely by the project leadership and may result in suspension or termination of your commit privileges. That's never an option which the project's leadership enjoys in the slightest, but unity comes first. No amount of code or good advice is worth trading that away. Discuss any significant change before committing. The CVS repository is not where changes should be initially submitted for correctness or argued over, that should happen first in the mailing lists and then committed only once something resembling consensus has been reached. This doesn't mean that you have to ask permission before correcting every obvious syntax error or man page misspelling, simply that you should try to develop a feel for when a proposed change isn't quite such a no-brainer and requires some feedback first. People really don't mind sweeping changes if the result is something clearly better than what they had before, they just don't like being surprised by those changes. The very best way of making sure that you're on the right track is to have your code reviewed by one or more other committers. When in doubt, ask for review! Respect existing maintainers if listed. Many parts of FreeBSD aren't owned in the sense that any specific individual will jump up and yell if you commit a change to their area, but it still pays to check first. One convention we use is to put a maintainer line in the Makefile for any package or subtree which is being actively maintained by one or more people; see http://www.FreeBSD.org/handbook/policies.html for documentation on this. Where sections of code have several maintainers, commits to affected areas by one maintainer need to be reviewed by at least one other maintainer. In cases where the maintainer-ship of something isn't clear, you can also look at the CVS logs for the file(s) in question and see if someone has been working recently or predominantly in that area. Other areas of FreeBSD fall under the control of someone who manages an overall category of FreeBSD evolution, such as internationalization or networking. See http://www.FreeBSD.org/handbook/staff-who.html for more information on this. Never touch the repository directly. Ask a Repomeister. This is pretty clear - you're not allowed to make direct modifications to the CVS repository, period. In case of difficulty, ask one of the repository meisters by sending mail to cvs@FreeBSD.org and simply wait for them to fix the problem and get back to you. Do not attempt to fix the problem yourself! If you're thinking about putting down a tag or doing a new import of code on a vendor branch, you might also find it useful to ask for advice first. A lot of people get this wrong the first few times and the consequences are expensive in terms of files touched and angry CVSup/CTM folks who are suddenly getting a lot of changes sent over unnecessarily. Any disputed change must be backed out pending resolution of the dispute if requested by a maintainer or the Principal Architect. Security related changes may override a maintainer's wishes at the Security Officer's discretion. This may be hard to swallow in times of conflict (when each side is convinced that they're in the right, of course) but CVS makes it unnecessary to have an ongoing dispute raging when it's far easier to simply reverse the disputed change, get everyone calmed down again and then try and figure out how best to proceed. If the change turns out to be the best thing after all, it can be easily brought back. If it turns out not to be, then the users didn't have to live with the bogus change in the tree while everyone was busily debating its merits. People very very rarely call for back-outs in the repository since discussion generally exposes bad or controversial changes before the commit even happens, but on such rare occasions the back-out should be done without argument so that we can get immediately on to the topic of figuring out whether it was bogus or not. Changes go to -CURRENT before -STABLE unless specifically permitted by the release engineer or unless they're not applicable to -CURRENT. Any non-trivial or non-urgent change which is applicable should also be allowed to sit in -CURRENT for at least 3 days before merging so that it can be given sufficient testing. The release engineer has the same authority over the -STABLE branch as outlined in rule #5. This is another don't argue about it issue since it's the release engineer who is ultimately responsible (and gets beaten up) if a change turns out to be bad. Please respect this and give the release engineer your full cooperation when it comes to the -STABLE branch. The management of -STABLE may frequently seem to be overly conservative to the casual observer, but also bear in mind the fact that conservatism is supposed to be the hallmark of -STABLE and different rules apply there than in -CURRENT. There's also really no point in having -CURRENT be a testing ground if changes are merged over to -STABLE immediately. Changes need a chance to be tested by the -CURRENT developers, so allow some time to elapse before merging unless the -STABLE fix is critical, time sensitive or so obvious as to make further testing unnecessary (spelling fixes to manpages, obvious bug/typo fixes, etc.) In other words, apply common sense. Don't fight in public with other committers; it looks bad. If you must strongly disagree about something, do so only in private. This project has a public image to uphold and that image is very important to all of us, especially if we are to continue to attract new members. There will be occasions when, despite everyone's very best attempts at self-control, tempers are lost and angry words are exchanged, and the best we can do is try and minimize the effects of this until everyone has cooled back down. That means that you should not air your angry words in public and you should not forward private correspondence to public mailing lists or aliases. What people say one-to-one is often much less sugar-coated than what they would say in public, and such communications therefore have no place there - they only serve to inflame an already bad situation. If the person sending you a flame-o-gram at least had the grace to send it privately, then have the grace to keep it private yourself. If you feel you are being unfairly treated by another developer, and it is causing you anguish, bring the matter up with core rather than taking it public. We will do our best to play peace makers and get things back to sanity. In cases where the dispute involves a change to the codebase and the participants do not appear to be reaching an amicable agreement, core may appoint a mutually-agreeable 3rd party to resolve the dispute. All parties involved must then agree to be bound by the decision reached by this 3rd party. Respect all code freezes and read the committers mailing list on a timely basis so you know when they are. Committing changes during a code freeze is a really big mistake and committers are expected to keep up-to-date on what's going on before jumping in after a long absence and committing 10 megabytes worth of accumulated stuff. People who abuse this on a regular basis will have their commit privileges suspended until they get back from the FreeBSD Happy Reeducation Camp we run in Greenland. When in doubt on any procedure, ask first! Many mistakes are made because someone is in a hurry and just assumes they know the right way of doing something. If you have not done it before, chances are good that you do not actually know the way we do things and really need to ask first or you are going to completely embarrass yourself in public. There's no shame in asking how in the heck do I do this? We already know you are an intelligent person; otherwise, you would not be a committer. Test your changes before committing them. This may sound obvious, but if it really were so obvious then we probably wouldn't see so many cases of people clearly not doing this. If your changes are to the kernel, make sure you can still compile both GENERIC and LINT. If your changes are anywhere else, make sure you can still make world. If your changes are to a branch, make sure your testing occurs with a machine which is running that code. If you have a change which also may break another architecture, be sure and test on all supported architectures. Currently, this is only the x86 and the alpha so it's pretty easy to do. If you need to test on the AXP, your account on beast.FreeBSD.org will let you compile and test alpha binaries/kernels/etc. As other architectures are added to the FreeBSD supported platforms list, the appropriate shared testing resources will be made available. Other Suggestions When committing documentation changes, use a spell checker before committing. :) For all SGML docs, you should also verify that your formatting directives are correct by running make lint. For all on-line manual pages, run manck (from ports) over the man page to verify the all of the cross references and file references are correct and that the man page has all of the appropriate MLINKs installed. Do not mix style fixes with new functionality. A style fix is any change which does not modify the functionality of the code. Mixing the changes obfuscates the functionality change when using cvs diff, which can hide any new bugs. Do not include whitespace changes with content changes in commits to doc/ or www/. The extra clutter in the diffs makes the translators' job much more difficult. Instead, make any style or whitespace changes in seperate commits that are clearly labeled as such in the commit message. Ports Specific FAQ Importing a New Port How do I import a new port? First, please read the section about repository copy. The easiest way to import a new port is to use the easy-import script on freefall. It will ask you some questions and import the port in the directory you specify. It will also add an entry to the CVSROOT/modules file. It was written by &a.joerg; so please send mail to him if you have questions about easy-import. One thing it will not do for you is add the port to the parent (category) Makefile. You have to do that yourself. Any other things I need to know when I import a new port? Check the port, preferably to make sure it compiles and packages correctly. This is the recommended sequence: &prompt.root; make install &prompt.root; make package &prompt.root; make deinstall &prompt.root; pkg_add package you built above &prompt.root; make deinstall &prompt.root; make reinstall &prompt.root; make package The - Porters + Porters Handbook contains more detailed instructions. Use &man.portlint.1; to check the syntax of the port. You don't necessarily have to eliminate all warnings but make sure you have fixed the simple ones. If the port came from a submitter who has not contributed to the project before, add that person's name to the Handbook's Additional Contributors section. Close the PR if the port came in as a PR. To close a PR, just do edit-pr PR# on freefall and change the state from open to closed. You will be asked to enter a log message and then you are done. Repository Copies When do we need a repository copy? When you want to import a port that is related to any port that is already in the tree in a separate directory, please send mail to the ports manager asking about it. Here related means it is a different version or a slightly modified version. Examples are print/ghostscript* (different versions) and x11-wm/windowmaker* (English-only and internationalized version). Another example is when a port is moved from one subdirectory to another, or when you want to change the name of a directory because the author(s) renamed their software even though it is a descendant of a port already in a tree. When do we not need a repository copy? When there is no history to preserve. If a port is imported into a wrong category and is moved immediately, it suffices to simply cvs remove the old one and cvs import the new one. What do I need to do? Send mail to the ports manager, who will do a copy from the old location/name to the new location/name. You will then get a notice, at which point you are expected to perform the following: cvs remove the old port (if necessary) Adjust the parent (category) Makefile Update CVSROOT/modules If other ports depend on the updated port, change their Makefiles' dependency lines If the port changed categories, modify the CATEGORIES line of the port's Makefile accordingly Ports Freeze What is a ports freeze? Before a release, it is necessary to restrict commits to the ports tree for a short period of time while the packages and the release itself are being built. This is to ensure consistency among the various parts of the release, and is called the ports freeze. How long is a ports freeze? Usually two to three days. What does it mean to me? During the ports freeze, you are not allowed to commit anything to the tree without explicit approval from the ports manager. Explicit approval here means either of the following: You asked the ports manager and got a reply saying, Go ahead and commit it. The ports manager sent a mail to you or the mailing lists during the ports freeze pointing out that the port is broken and has to be fixed. Note that you do not have implicit permission to fix a port during the freeze just because it is broken. How do I know when the ports freeze starts? The ports manager will send out warning messages to the freebsd-ports@FreeBSD.org and cvs-committers@FreeBSD.org mailing lists announcing the start of the impending release, usually two or three weeks in advance. The exact starting time will not be determined until a few days before the actual release. This is because the ports freeze has to be synchronized with the release, and it is usually not known until then when exactly the release will be rolled. When the freeze starts, there will be another announcement to the cvs-committers@FreeBSD.org list, of course. How do I know when the ports freeze ends? A few hours after the release, the ports manager will send out a mail to the freebsd-ports@FreeBSD.org and cvs-committers@FreeBSD.org mailing lists announcing the end of the ports freeze. Note that the release being cut does not automatically end the freeze. We have to make sure there will not be any last minute snafus that result in an immediate re-rolling of the release. Miscellaneous Questions How do I know if my port is building correctly or not? First, go check http://bento.FreeBSD.org/~asami/errorlogs/. There you will find error logs from the latest package building runs on 3-stable and 4-current. However, just because the port doesn't show up there doesn't mean it's building correctly. (One of the dependencies may have failed, for instance.) Here are the relevant directories on bento, so feel free to dig around. /a/asami/portbuild/3/errors error logs from latest 3-stable run /logs all logs from latest 3-stable run /packages packages from latest 3-stable run /bak/errors error logs from last complete 3-stable run /bak/logs all logs from last complete 3-stable run /bak/packages packages from last complete 3-stable run /4/errors error logs from latest 4-current run /logs all logs from latest 4-current run /packages packages from latest 4-current run /bak/errors error logs from last complete 4-current run /bak/logs all logs from last complete 4-current run /bak/packages packages from last complete 4-current run Basically, if the port shows up in packages, or it is in logs but not in errors, it built fine. (The errors directories are what you get from the web page.) I added a new port. Do I need to add it to the INDEX? No. The ports manager will regenerate the INDEX and commit it every few days. Are there any other files I'm not allowed to touch? Any file directly under ports/, or any file under a subdirectory that starts with an uppercase letter (Mk/, Tools/, etc.). In particular, the ports manager is very protective of ports/Mk/bsd.port*.mk so don't commit changes to those files unless you want to face his wra(i)th. Miscellaneous Questions Why are trivial or cosmetic changes to files on a vendor branch a bad idea? The RCS file format is quite braindead and certain operations to achieve things for CVS are hideously expensive for the repository. Making changes to files on a vendor branch, thereby pulling the file off that branch, is one example of this. Suppose you have a file which was first imported on a vendor branch, and was then re-imported three times (still on the vendor branch) as the vendor makes updates to the file. 1.1.1.1 vendor import 1.1.1.2 vendor import, +1000, -500 lines 1.1.1.3 vendor import, +2000, -500 lines 1.1.1.4 vendor import, +1000, -1000 lines Now suppose that one of the FreeBSD committers makes a one line change to this file, causing it to go to version 1.2. This causes it to leave the branch, resulting in 4,001 lines being added to the file's history, and 2,001 lines being deleted. This is because the 1.2 delta is stored relative to 1.1.1.1, not 1.1.1.4, and so the entire vendor history is duplicated in the 1.2 delta. Now, repeat this for 2000 files in a large directory, it adds up a lot. This is why we have such hands off policies for src/contrib and other things that track the vendor releases. This is why typo fixes in man pages and spelling corrections are so strongly discouraged for vendor code. How do I add a new file to a CVS branch? To add a file onto a branch, simply checkout or update to the branch you want to add to and then add the file using cvs add as you normally would. For example, if you wanted to MFC the file src/sys/alpha/include/smp.h from HEAD to RELENG_4 and it does not exist in RELENG_4 yet, you would use the following steps: MFC'ing a New File &prompt.user; cd sys/alpha/include &prompt.user; cvs update -rRELENG_4 cvs update: Updating . U clockvar.h U console.h ... &prompt.user; cvs update -kk -Ap smp.h > smp.h =================================================================== Checking out smp.h RCS: /usr/cvs/src/sys/alpha/include/smp.h,v VERS: 1.1 *************** &prompt.user; cvs add smp.h cvs add: scheduling file `smp.h' for addition on branch `RELENG_4' cvs add: use 'cvs commit' to add this file permanently &prompt.user; cvs commit