Whether you're an experienced developer or an end user, there are many ways for you to participate in the FLAIM component. Join a forum to get help or help others, find and report bugs, create and submit patches, send your wish list for new features, or find other creative ways to contribute. Whatever you do, take a few minutes to discuss FLAIM with other users and become an active member of the FLAIM communities.
The Subversion repository for the FLAIM project is hosted on Novell's forge site. The Subversion URL for the FLAIM project is https://forgesvn1.novell.com/svn/flaim. Both FLAIM and XFLAIM source are located here. For information on checking out an SVN project please click here.
Building FLAIM and XFLAIM
There are two subdirectories in the FLAIM project: flaim and xflaim. The flaim subdirectory contains all of the source needed to build FLAIM 4.8. The xflaim subdirectory contains all of the source needed to build XFLAIM 5.0. Each subdirectory has a Makefile (GNU make file) that may be used to build on all supported platforms. You may build by simply typing 'make'. To build a debug library, type 'make debug all'. Supported platforms include: Windows (2000,XP), Linux (SUSE, Redhat, Ubuntu, Debian), Unix (Solaris, AIX, HP/UX), MAC OS/X (both PowerPC and Intel), and Netware 6.5 (must be cross-compiled on Windows).
NOTE: For non-supported platforms (Linux and Unix only), there is a autogen.sh script that may be used to create a configure script. The sequence of commands to build on these platforms would be: './autogen.sh', './configure', and 'make'.
It is assumed that when you type 'make', the GNU Make tool will be invoked. For Windows, there is a make.exe in these subdirectories that will be invoked. For Solaris and possibly other versions of Unix, you may need to type 'gmake' instead of 'make'.
Development Tools Needed To Build
For Windows, the standard Windows development tools are used (they are assumed to be installed and the PATH environment set up to access them). Either Visual Studio .NET 2003/2005 or Visual C++ 2005 Express can be used. To download a free version of Visual C++ 2005 Express Edition, click here.
For Netware, the OpenWatcom development tools are used. The environment variable WC_DIR needs to be set to the directory where OpenWatcom has been installed. NOTE: Netware builds are currently only enabled for FLAIM 4.x (the flaim subdirectory).
For Solaris, AIX, and HP/UX the platform native compilers are used by default. To use the GNU tools on these platforms type 'make usegcc all' or 'make debug usegcc all'.
For all Linux platforms, the GNU tools are used.
64 Bit Builds
When building on a 64 bit platform, the default behavior of the compiler may be to generate 32 bit binaries. To force the generation of 64 bit binaries, specify the '64bit' target on the make command line. Likewise, for platforms that default to building 64 binaries, you may force 32 bit binaries to be built by specifying the '32bit' target.
The best way to start getting involved is to first get signed up with the forums, mailing lists, and IRC channels. Go to the Communicate page to get started.
The FLAIM site is hosted as a Wiki. The concept of a Wiki is that anybody may add and modify content. You can find a quick Wiki tutorial here if you're unfamiliar with Wikis.
You can help improve FLAIM by finding and reporting bugs. Our bug tracking system, Bugzilla, is used for FLAIM. If you have never written a bug report, please refer to Bug Reporting FAQ to learn what kinds of information make the report most useful.
The easiest way to participate in the development of FLAIM is to post a patch as a suggested solution to an existing bug in Bugzilla. A FLAIM maintainer will contact you to discuss your proposed solution. You may want to join the FLAIM mailing lists before you start coding in order to discuss your plans and coordinate with other developers.
For more information about getting source code and building your own packages, read the FLAIM Build Tutorial.
There are several active communities that help all levels of FLAIM users. Please have a look at Communicate for an overview.
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