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Contents

  1. What are development versions of GNOME all about?
  2. Should I track development versions?
  3. How do I obtain development versions of GNOME stuff?
  4. How do I keep everything up-to-date and in sync?
  5. What should I do when something does not work?
  6. How can I help with the development versions?
  7. What is the current state of development GNOME on FreeBSD

Full Text

  1. What are development versions of GNOME all about?

    The development versions are the packages released by the GNOME project that will eventually become the stable (release) versions. There are three working branches of GNOME development:

    1. STABLE - The applications and libraries in the stable branch are considered "release quality," and are the versions that appear in the FreeBSD ports tree. The current stable version is GNOME &gnomever;.
    2. DEVELOPMENT - In between stable releases are development releases. Traditionally, GNOME development releases have odd minor numbers (e.g. 2.3, &gnomedevelver;, 2.(n*2)-1). Development releases will become stable releases, and move from alpha to beta quality during their lifecycle. The development releases need testing by FreeBSD users to minimize the number of surprises when the new stable versions are committed to the FreeBSD CVS tree. This document is about the development branch. The current development branch is GNOME &gnomedevelver;.
    3. CVS - Often newer-than-new, the CVS HEAD versions of GNOME applications and libraries are alpha quality, or often completely unbuildable. The FreeBSD GNOME project pays attention to, but does not track the alpha quality code.

  2. Should I track GNOME development versions?

    If you are looking for a stable environment, absolutely not. Please only track the GNOME &gnomedevelver; branch if you wish to help identify bugs and improve the FreeBSD GNOME project. You will find little sympathy if a development-quality GNOME application eats your homework.

  3. How do I obtain the development versions of GNOME stuff?

    Marcus maintains a CVS repository where all the development versions of the GNOME components for FreeBSD are housed. Instructions for how to check out the development ports module and how to merge it into the FreeBSD ports tree reside on the entrance page to his repository. Please read carefully the instructions at http://www.marcuscom.com:8080/cgi-bin/cvsweb.cgi.

    In order to help with bug reports, be sure to add the following to /etc/make.conf so that gdb back traces contain useful information:

     CFLAGS=	-O -g -pipe
 STRIP=

  4. How do I keep everything up-to-date and in sync?

    The short answer is that you need to use the marcusmerge script to merge the development tree with the FreeBSD ports tree. The marcusmerge script is available here, and a man page on using the script is available here. This script will merge the development ports tree into your main ports tree. From there, you can download the gnome_upgrade.sh script to aid in upgrading from GNOME 2.4 to &gnomedevelver;. Once you are running GNOME &gnomedevelver;, you can use portupgrade to stay up-to-date.

    The long answer is that keeping up-to-date with the GNOME development branch is complicated. Sometimes components change in a way that makes portupgrade fail, or causes strange end results. If you plan to track the development branch, it is a good idea to join the freebsd-gnome mailing list, as well as to join the #freebsd-gnome IRC channel on FreeNode (irc.freenode.net).

    If all of this sounds scary, or you need a desktop that "Just Works," you should stick with the stable GNOME branch.

  5. What should I do when something does not work?

    It depends. If you think the problem is truly a bug with the GNOME component, you can report a bug using bug-buddy or the GNOME Bugzilla interface (NOTE: Evolution's Bugzilla interface can be found here). If you think the problem lies in a FreeBSD port, or is FreeBSD-specific, send email to &email;@FreeBSD.org, or report the problem on the #freebsd-gnome IRC channel on FreeNode.

    Please forward all GNOME/Ximian bug IDs to &email;@FreeBSD.org so we can keep track of known issues. Thanks!

  6. How can I help with the development versions?

    Currently, we need people to test as much as possible, and to file as many good bugs as possible. We also need people with artistic skills to create some hot screenshots.

    If you like coding, and you know Perl, we really need someone to help in porting gnome-system-tools. Please contact marcus@FreeBSD.org if you are interested in helping with this.

    Even if you don't like working directly with code, we need reports on experiences upgrading from GNOME &gnomever; to GNOME &gnomedevelver;; we need information on which apps are exhibiting strange behaviour; we need to know in advance everything that an end-user is likely to wind up scratching his or her head about in the future.

  7. What is the current state of development GNOME on FreeBSD?

    Development versions of the entire GNOME &gnomedevelver; desktop environment are available, and they all compile cleanly.

    Most of the components of x11/gnome2-fifth-toe have working development versions. None of the apps that use the C++ bindings work yet; the C++ bindings themselves are there, but none of the Fifth Toe apps will currently compile against them.

    Existing GNOME &gnomedevelver; users should do the following to work around a file conflict with libgnome and gnomecontrolcenter2 that caused key repeat to fail:

     # portupgrade -f gnomecontrolcenter2
 # portupgrade -f libgnome

    Known Bugs:

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