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, as well as the FLAIM toolkit (FTK), and the experimental FLAIMSQL project. For information on checking out an SVN project please click here.
Building FTK, FLAIM and XFLAIM
There are three subdirectories in the FLAIM project: ftk, flaim and xflaim. The ftk subdirectory contains the flaim toolkit, which may be used without flaim as a platform abstraction layer. 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.
The legacy FLAIM project was built using a GNU makefile. Currently the FLAIM project uses the GNU Autotools to build for non-Windows platforms, and a MSVS 2008 Solution (.sln) file to build for Windows platforms. Supported platforms include: Windows (2000, XP, Vista, and Windows Server 2003 and 2008), 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, and currently this functionality is broken, as the cross-compile source in the original GNU makefile has not yet been ported to the GNU Autotools build system).
Building the FLAIM project on non-Windows platforms from a distribution tarball is trivial: Just use the standard GNU ./configure && make dance. To build from a repository work area, please begin from the root directory with the autoreconf -i command to create the necessary configure script. Then, continue with ./configure && 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 2005/2008 or Visual C++ 2005/2008 Express can be used. To download a free version of Visual C++ 2008 Express Edition, click here.
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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