How to Dev

How to 'dev'

This page serves as the official introduction on how to collaborate with our community and help to improve Funtoo Linux.

Introduction

Thanks for your interest in helping out with Funtoo Linux! Funtoo Linux has existed for several years, and we've been using git since the beginning of the project, but have played with various approaches on how to develop Funtoo Linux in a collaborative fashion. Some approaches have worked, some haven't, and I (Daniel) and others like to periodically experiment with different approaches, so these methods are likely to change in the future.

Let's start by doing a quick overview of Funtoo infrastructure and how it (currently) relates to Funtoo Linux development.

bugs.funtoo.org

Currently, bugs.funtoo.org serves as the center of operations for all development. If you're going to collaborate with us, then you should definitely Create a Funtoo account and familiarize yourself with our bug tracker. We try to ensure that all work in Funtoo Linux has a corresponding issue opened on the bug tracker, so there is some reference for someone to look to find out why some change was made.

The Wiki

You are currently reading the wiki, and it is becoming a more and more important part of development. We currently have the ability to define wiki pages for Ebuilds, which are used as official documentation for the ebuild. Documentation is a very important part of Funtoo Linux development, and you're strongly encouraged to read about Adding an Ebuild to the Wiki.

git.funtoo.org

All of our master git repositories exist on git.funtoo.org.

GitHub

We have mirrors of all our git repositories on GitHub. When we push to a repository on git.funtoo.org, it automatically pushes the change to the corresponding repo on GitHub, too.

This has historically created some confusion, because we don't really (right now) do active development on GitHub, using pull requests. If you have an improvement to Funtoo Linux, we want you to open a bug on our bug tracker. However, I am hoping that this will change - see FL-1322. But for now, if you create an issue or a pull request on GitHub, we probably won't see it in a timely manner.

The Git Repositories Themselves

One important thing to understand about Funtoo Linux is that the git tree you receive when you type emerge --sync is what I call a transport tree -- it is used to deliver updates to you, but it is not used for development. Our main /usr/portage tree can be seen at http://git.funtoo.org/ports-2012/tree or http://github.com/funtoo/ports-2012 is generated using automated scripts which take the Gentoo Portage tree, various funtoo overlays, and several other overlays and combine them into a unified tree.