Introduction to Building Open Source Software

From Foss2Serve
Revision as of 19:22, 31 July 2015 by Spot (Talk | contribs)
(diff) ← Older revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)
Jump to: navigation, search
Title Introduction to building open source software
Overview In the modern UNIX/Linux/BSD era, the most common way to build and install open source software is with the use of "configure" and "make" tools. This exercise provides an introduction to building

open-source software with those tools.

Prerequisite Knowledge Students should be comfortable with: uncompressing source "tarballs", using the Linux commandline, using "su" (or "sudo") to gain root privileges, installing software packages with the native package manager
Learning Objectives Student should be able to configure, build, and install software using the "configure" and "make" tools.

Background:

https://www.gnu.org/software/make/manual/html_node/Introduction.html http://airs.com/ian/configure/configure_1.html

Directions:

First, let's get started by opening a terminal window. You should be logged in as your normal (non-root) user. If you are not in your home directory, go there by typing:

cd ~

On Fedora, in GNOME, it will look something like this:


EXAMPLE CODE

Run each statement below in a bash terminal. Then answer the questions below (or as you go).

	ls
	touch f1
	ls
	mv f1 f2
	ls
	cp f2 f1
	ls
	rm f2
	ls
	mkdir d1
	mv f1 d1
	ls
	ls d1
	pwd
	cd d1
	pwd
	ls
	cd ..
	pwd
	ls
	rm d1	# fails
	rm -r d1

  1. What does `ls` display?
  2. What does `mv A B` do if `B` ___is not___ a directory?
  3. What does `mv A B` do if `B` is a directory?
  4. What does `cp A B` do if `B` ___is not___ a directory?
  5. What does `rm A` do if `A` is a file?
  6. What does `mkdir A` do?
  7. What does `pwd` display?
  8. What does `ls A` display if `A` is a directory?
  9. What does `cd A` do?
  10. What does `cd ..` do?
  11. What does `..` mean in `cd ..`?
  12. When do you use `rm -r A` instead of `rm A`?


Getting Help

Run each statement below in a bash terminal. Then answer the questions below (or as you go).

	man
	man man		# Press `space` to page down, `b` to go back, `q` to quit.
	man ls
	man cd		# Unexpected result.
	help cd

  1. What does `man` do?
  2. What does `help` do?
  3. Use `man` to confirm answers in previous section.

Deliverables:

  1. Answers and explanations for the license scenarios
  2. A short lightning talk presentation that clearly illustrates a correct and attributed use of CC materials.

Assessment:

Students can be graded on choosing a correct license, understanding how a license affects what can be done with a creative work, and on their ability to put that knowledge into practice.

Criteria Level 1 (fail) Level 2 (pass) Level 3 (good) Level 4 (exceptional)
Choosing a correct CC license 0-2 correct answers 2-4 answers correct, with valid reasoning (or more answers correct, but without valid reasoning) 4-5 answers correct, with valid reasoning All answers correct, with valid reasoning.
Understanding how a license affects what can be done with a creative work 0-1 correct answers 1-2 correct answers 2-3 correct answers All answers correct
Presentation Does not attribute sources at all Lists license but not full attribution Contains proper attributions, but only a few sources. Multiple sources, properly attributed. Talk itself is properly CC licensed

Comments:

What should the instructor know before using this activity?

A basic familiarity with autotools generated configure and Makefiles is very helpful, though, not necessarily required.

Additional Information:

Knowledge Area/Knowledge Unit Software Engineering (SE) / Tools and Environments
Topic Software configuration management and version control
Level of Difficulty Easy
Estimated Time to Completion 30 minutes to 1 hour
Materials/Environment Internet access, computer (or VM) with Linux installed, student has account and root access (sudo is fine). Some commands reference Fedora, but can be converted to other Linux flavors.
Author Tom Callaway
Source
License This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License


Suggestions for the Open Source Project:

What documentation do you provide on how to build your code? Is it current and accurate? Do you discuss the various configuration options and what effect they have on the final build?



This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License

CC license.png

Personal tools
Namespaces
Variants
Actions
Events
Learning Resources
HFOSS Projects
Evaluation
Navigation
Toolbox