This is a general introduction to the layout of the SEUL project, intended to get new developers up to speed quickly on how to access SEUL sources, answer common questions, and describe where to look for more information. It is intended to cover areas that are relevant to the entire project - some groups may have 'getting started' info of their own. If you are already familiar with all the tools used by SEUL devlopers (ssh, cvs, seuldoc, etc), then you should only have to read through this document, and immediately be able to get to work. For more details any given tool, this document makes reference to other FAQ's which describe how to use each one in greater detail. This document introduces: | What is this? |
The SEUL project presently uses two primary servers, one oriented toward public activities (web, mailing lists, etc), and one for developer use (holds the SEUL source repository). The "public" server has the address {{{OMEGA, INSERT ADDRESS}}}. The "private" file server is cranleigh.mit.edu (aka "Cran"). PLEASE NOTE: These are not necessarily permanent assignments, and are quite liable to change within a few months, once the SEUL project has had a chance to stabilize some more. The aliases that are not so subject to change are:
The primary maintainer for www.seul.txcc.net is is cl@txcc.net {{{OMEGA - PLEASE UPDATE}}}, and cran is maintained by luka@mit.edu. So if there is anything legitimately wrong with the server or its services (i.e. if the machine has been inaccessible for a few hours, and it is not a problem with your connection), email the maintainer with exact details. Note that questions on how to use the services provided by the machines should NOT be addressed to the maintainers, but to the appropriate help list. The rest of this document deals with services provided by cran, since the seul.txcc.net {{{UPDATE}}} server is pretty much automated and needs only be touched by the actual administrators. (Web page updates are done from the document repository on cran.) If you want to know about how seul.txcc.net is set up, you need to look elsewhere. | SEUL Servers |
All source code and documents (with only a few special exceptions, such as automated archives), are kept under version control on our development server, cran. Version control systems (such as RCS, SCCS, and CVS) are used to keep track of documents as they are modified over time, and facilitate modification by multiple developers. If this is news to you, then you should read the cvs FAQ and other documentation referenced later carefully.
For more info just on the exact structure of the cvs tree, you can also go an look at the spec for the tree layout now. {{{SIMON - DO THIS}}}
For more info just on the exact structure of the cvs tree, you can also go an look at the spec for the tree layout now. {{{SIMON - DO THIS}}}For more info just on the exact structure of the cvs tree, you can also go an look at the spec for the tree layout now. {{{SIMON - DO THIS}}}The SEUL project uses CVS for version control. The exact source repository is cvs.seul.org:/home/seul/cvsroot/. To access it, you will need cvs installed on your own machine (the one you plan to use for working with the source), and a cvs account on cran. To get a cvs account, contact luka@mit.edu. There should be a standard form for this request soon...
For more info just on the exact structure of the cvs tree, you can also go an look at the spec for the tree layout now. {{{SIMON - DO THIS}}}
For more info just on the exact structure of the cvs tree, you can also go an look at the spec for the tree layout now. {{{SIMON - DO THIS}}}For more info just on the exact structure of the cvs tree, you can also go an look at the spec for the tree layout now. {{{SIMON - DO THIS}}} Additionally, remote cvs access uses ssh (secure shell), so you will need ssh installed on your machine as well. Cvs likes to use rsh by default, but you simply override this by setting your CVSRSH environment variable to ssh. If all of that is old hat to you, good! If not, don't panic! If you're not absolutely sure what's going on here, just go on to read the SEUL ssh/cvs instructions now, for a friendlier explanation, and step-by-step instructions on how to get everything set up and working for you. For more info just on the exact structure of the cvs tree, you can also go an look at the spec for the tree layout now. {{{SIMON - DO THIS}}} | The SEUL source repository |
One last thing you should be aware of before going off and working freely on SEUL stuff is that we use a standard called SEUL-doc, or sdoc, for all our written documentation. It allows us to keep track of what has been written, search for documents by keyword (eventually ;-)), and control the formatting of the document for a uniform look across documents of given types. There is no FAQ on this yet, but a brief outline of the tags is availible here. Use any of the documents already stored in the cvs tree as examples. | sdoc |