Blackbox CVS

This page describes how to get a copy of non-official, development-state source code for Blackbox. Note that even though it's called "CVS", it deals with all the version control systems currently related to Blackbox.

1 What is CVS/Subversion?

2 Should I use development code?

3 Using CVS

3.1 Browsing the repository

3.2 Downloading code

3.3 Tips and Tricks

3.4 More information

4 Using Subversion

5 Grabbing nightly snapshots

6 Building development code

1) What is CVS/Subversion?

CVS stands for Concurrent Versioning System. Subversion is sometimes abbreviated to SVN. They are both open source version control and collaboration systems.

In plain terms, it means they're systems that allow different people, often located in different parts of the world, to work on the same project at the same time. The system offers them tools that allow them to keep track of all the changes and to combine their contributions easily.

As an intentional side-effect, it also allows users to get their hands on the latest, hot-out-of-the-oven, code for the application that's being currently being developed.

CVS is only one of many version control systems, but it's one of the most popular ones. Subversion has been catching up to it rapidly these years and is now widely considered even better.

2) Should I use development code?

Generally, this is only recommended for people who (a) know how to compile source code and (b) are willing to put up with problems.

In case you decide to use development code, you will probably want to use the BlackboxDevelopment methods of reporting back your experiences.

Pro's:

Most of the time, the development code is pretty stable and usable. Many people, including developers, use it exclusively, so you can imagine they have every interest in keeping it usable.
Development code is much more up-to-date than the official releases. Sometimes you can see improvements as often as weekly or even daily.
If many people (both users and developers) use development code it is beneficial for everybody, because bugs are discovered and fixed much more quickly.

Con's:

Development code may or may not work properly at any given time. There will be bugs. How many there are and how quickly they get fixed depends on many factors. Most important is probably how quickly people report those bugs and how willing they are to provide debugging information to the developers.
Developers run Blackbox on only one or two machines. They can't replicate the environment on all the type of hardware, software and operating systems out there. This leads to problems sometimes, and you may run into a situation they simply couldn't predict. But remember that without your feedback those problems will not be fixed.

3) Using CVS

3.1) Browsing the repository

You can browse development code online. This is handy if you just want to view parts of the source without having to download the whole thing.

Use the following page to browse through the Blackbox CVS repository:

http://blackboxwm.cvs.sourceforge.net/blackboxwm/

3.2) Downloading code

Install CVS*. Most Linux distributions should have a readily-available package that you can install easily.

Go into a directory where you would like to place a copy of the Blackbox CVS source. A blackbox/ subdir will appear here once you complete the following steps.

To log into the CVS repository, type the following. The password is blank, so just press ENTER when you get the password prompt.
```
cvs -d:pserver:anonymous@blackboxwm.cvs.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/blackboxwm login
```

Download the latest and hottest CVS source with the following command:
```
cvs -z3 -d:pserver:anonymous@blackboxwm.cvs.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/blackboxwm co blackbox
```
- To checkout a version other than the latest, you need to add -r TAGNAME to the above command, just before blackbox. To find out valid tag names, go here* and look inside the drop-down selection box at the top, under "Non-branch tags". Example:
```
cvs -z3 -d:pserver:anonymous@blackboxwm.cvs.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/blackboxwm co -r blackbox-0_65_0 blackbox
```

It's also polite to let the server know when you're done:

cvs -d:pserver:anonymous@blackboxwm.cvs.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/blackboxwm logout

3.3) Tips and Tricks

If you want to stay current with the CVS, you don't have to grab the whole thing again. Just run cvs -z3 update -d -R from the blackbox/ dir, and CVS will update your working copy to the latest one.

It's a good idea not to compile directly from under the copy you pulled from CVS. During the compilation process, many files are created and modified, which may confuse CVS. So keep the CVS update copy clean and compile under another copy of it.

SourceForge provides 2 types of CVS access: Developer CVS and Anonymous CVS. Only project members have Developer CVS access. Please note that the Anonymous CVS repository is updated from the Developer CVS repository at 1 hour intervals, i.e. it can take up to 1 hour before a change made in CVS is available through Anonymous CVS.

3.4) More information

The SourceForge official CVS help page*.

The CVS Wiki*, which includes an online manual.

4) Using Subversion

Subversion services haven't been enabled by the Blackbox project administrators and are not likely to be enabled in the future.

Doing so is a rather cumbersome process: the entire original repository (currently hosted on CVS) has to be exported then imported into Subversion. Quite a few additional settings have to be tweaked to achieve the same functionality currently already set up with CVS.

BradleyHughes hasn't so far expressed any particular desire or preference for Subversion over CVS. If we also consider the relative difficulty of the migration we can probably conclude it's not worth it.

5) Grabbing nightly snapshots

SourceForge re-enabled cron jobs*. Therefore you can download a nightly generated snapshot from the following address:

http://blackboxwm.sourceforge.net/blackbox-cvs-snapshot.tar.bz2 (~270 KB)

The tarball is a CVS checkout, therefore you can use the contents to update directly from CVS instead of downloading the entire tarball again.

The tarball is updated only once every 24 hours, so it's redundant to download it more than once during that interval.

6) Building development code

For information on how to build development code please refer to BlackboxDocumentation/CompilingBlackbox.