Hi All,

A quick update on the hackathon event that was announced earlier (mail below). The event happened as planned and it was fun !

What we came out with : 35 specs for softwares listed at http://www.opensolaris.org/os/project/bosug/news (the page also has the specs that were created)

We were 9 of us, of which 5 were students. Many of the participants were first timers to posix/porting/packaging...

It was fantastic - be it the initial unexpected hiccups with networking issues, setting up the environment or getting the first spec file and each one of us earning our lunches and finally ending up with a huge number of softwares available with the *build recipes* (35 to be precise) !

Thanks to all those who responded, participated and made it into a wonderful weekend that we had.... Thanks to Lazlo Peter, the author of the spec packaging tools for being online till 12pm(3am his time) !

Another good outcome is that few of the participants are *initiated into contribution*.

best regards Shiv

On 7/24/07, S h i v shivakumar.gn@gmail.com wrote:

Hello Blug members,

Bangalore OpenSolaris User Group (BOSUG) is an active OpenSolaris user group that has been around since ~2years (http://www.opensolaris.org/os/project/bosug).

BOSUG is organizing a Hackathon and this is a call for participation for the same.

Here is an excellent oppurtunity to share/contribute/learn. If you are interested in contributing to FOSS we would like to hear from you.

The announcement is also available at http://www.opensolaris.org/os/project/bosug/events Any updates will be available here.

Belenix(http://www.genunix.org/distributions/belenix_site) is an OpenSolaris based distro that some of you who participated in foss.in during 2005 and 2006 and took time to visit the OpenSolaris demos might recall. This community distro has come out of Bangalore and is one of most active OpenSolaris based distros. The hackathon has been decided based on likely future roadmap of Belenix (read the "Hackathon Background Information" at the end) and what we believe is the way OpenSolaris in general is likely to evolve.

Note: Confirmations to be sent to me by 2-Aug for those wish to attend the tutorial and by 5-Aug for those who do not need the tutorial to take part in the hackathon (See "Participation Requirements" below).

best regards Shiv

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Hackathon Announcement & Call for Participation

Hackathon (4-Aug & 11-Aug, 2007)

Scope : Creating OpenSolaris packages from pristine sources for a huge set of softwares

Tutorial session for the Hackathon (4-Aug 2007)

(Optional for people already familiar with Solaris packaging, pkgbuild) Date : 4-Aug 2007 Duration : 6:00pm – 8:00pm (GMT+530) Scope : Packaging howto using pkgbuild/pkgtool/rmp spec files. Some required details about SVR4 packages & GNU auto tools Venue : Divyashree chambers, Bangalore, INDIA A simple tutorial document will be provided for people participating from outside Bangalore (2 people have already expressed interest during the initial planning stage of this event)

Those who are interested to attend the tutorial but unable to participate in the hackathon may contact me offline.

The Hackathon (11-Aug 2007)

Date : 11-Aug 2007 Duration : 10am – 4:30pm (GMT+530) Scope : Creating OpenSolaris packages from pristine sources for a huge set of softwares(see details below) Venue : Divyashree chambers, Bangalore, INDIA

People outside Bangalore need to have a good net connection and come online. Details will be provided later. Deadline for participation confirmation:

Send your confirmations to shivakumar dot gn at gmail dot com

• Those who need the tutorial to be able to participate should confirm

their participation by 2-Aug

• Those who are already familiar with Solaris packaging,pkgbuild & GNU

autotools may confirm their participation by 5-Aug

The number of participants that we can accomodate is limited by the infrastructure that can be provided. Hence earlier you confirm the better are your chances of getting the opportunity to participate !

People who have good net facility and are located outside Bangalore can also participate.

Participation Requirements

Enthusiasm to share/contribute/learn/teach is the primary requirement!

Additionally one or more of these skills is expected

• A good familiarity with Solaris or Linux shell environment
• Shell scripting
• Authoring/debugging Makefiles
• GNU Autotools
• Authoring of rpm spec files (creating rpm packages)

(Note that those who will be attending the tutorial session will satisfy most of the requirements)

Infrastructure

Participants are expected to bring their own laptops

A small set of systems to accomodate ~6 people will also be available for those who are unable to arrange for a system of their own The source code for a huge set softwares will be available on a LAN

For people who get their own systems but donot have Solaris Express installed on their systems,

• VMware image of Solaris Express will be available that can be

used on their systems for the event. In this case a minimum of 1GB RAM is recommended for the laptop.

• A server will be available to offload their laptop contents to

make for disk space on their systems (if necessary)

** Lunch will be arranged at the venue **

Hackathon Background Information

Belenix is one of very active OpenSolaris distro around. It is nearing 2 years of existence. It currently does not have packaging support. This is intended to be included in one of the future releases.

Once packaging support is available the huge bunch of softwares need to be made available in the form of SVR4 packages. The SFE (rpm spec file like) based approach is well suited for this.

The number of build/package recipes currently available for OpenSolaris is limited (~250).

These 2 were the triggers to organise a hackthon that can deliver multiple benefits:

• Provides an opportunity for people desirous of contributing to

FOSS projects

• OpenSolaris distros get build/packaging recipes in the form of

rpm like spec files

• Many people become familiar with OpenSolaris development

platform and will be in a position to contribute

• Authors of FOSS softwares for Linux/Windows will be able to

recognize some of the areas to consider to make their softwares build across multiple platforms

The current list of softwares in Belenix will be the starting point to identify the set of softwares for which packaging support will be provided

Hackathon discussions are happening at "bosug discussion list"(http://www.opensolaris.org/jive/thread.jspa?threadID=34609&tstart=0) and at belenix-discuss mailing list (http://mail.opensolaris.org/pipermail/belenix-discuss/2007-July/000031.html)

Feel free to pitch in.