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!

For the first time in its 7 year history, members of the OpenCSW community gathered for a miniconf in Effretikon, Zurich (Switzerland) on December 6th 2008. Attendees were happy to welcome Phil Brown, founder of the Community Software effort, as well as fellow maintainers from different parts of Europe.

With the Blastwave/OpenCSW split in mind, which had put packaging efforts on hold over months, the main purpose of the meeting was to work out ways to avoid such situations in the future and settle on the direction the project should be heading to in the future.

Since its beginning the intention of Blastwave/CSW was to provide free software for the Solaris Operating Environment in a user-friendly way.

Today the OpenCSW project has 1800+ software packages in its catalogs and counts close to 2 million users worldwide. The project is run by volunteers and provides its packages free of charge to everyone.

As a result of the miniconf the “Open Community Software (OpenCSW) Project” was founded as an official association according to Swiss jurisdiction. The purpose of the association is to ensure the availability of the free, community-based software distribution known as OpenCSW. Its bylaws embody the core principles.

Contributors are welcome to join the association, as are new package maintainers. The association works free of charge and is not geared towards making profit. Philip Brown, Ihsan Dogan, and Dagobert Michelsen were voted on the board of the found association by the founding association members.

Alexander Maier, Trygve Laugstøl, Ihsan Dogan, Sebastian Kayser, Dagobert Michelsen, William Bonnet, Philip Brown, Dominique Laigle

There are more pictures from the event on Picasa and Flickr.