In the old days if some open source project was an easy compile it was on Solaris. Nowadays, as most development is done on Linux, compiling on Solaris can be challenging. This is not because maintainers don’t want to write portable software, but because they don’t have access to a Solaris system. The three most important things for a packaging project are IMHO:
1. Make sure the upstream software compiles smoothly on Solaris
2. If 1. is not possible: publish the patches to allow compilation on Solaris
3. Deliver the binary package for the software
Working with upstream is the most important thing: to make software easily compilable on Solaris without massive patching and to give every Solaris user the opportunity to compile it themselves without hassle. To achieve this we give upstream projects access to the OpenCSW buildfarm. At the moment 30 projects are using the farm. If you are an upstream developer and want access please mail to buildfarm@opencsw.org.
As I said compiling on Solaris can be challenging. To not waste efforts it is imperative to share the knowledge how to build it. You can find the build recipes and patches for OpenCSW packages in the GAR repository.
…and of course we provide binary packages as always.
The latest addition to the list of projects using the farm are Critical Mass Modula 3 to help porting it to Solaris x86. This will finally allow running CVSup on both flavors of Solaris. Expect a package soon!
