• DocumentationAndPackages

Documentation And Packages

There are two areas where MINIX has some catching up to do: documentation and packages. They provide many small projects, for which not much prior knowledge of MINIX is required, which provide a good way to get started with MINIX, and the results of which would be highly valuable to the MINIX project.

If you want to contribute, please pick a package or man-page below, put your name behind it, and see whether you can fix it. Please take on only one project at a time, so as not to block others who want to work on these projects.

Thanks for your help.

Missing man-pages

Below is a list of man-pages that are missing. Only utility programs are listed currently, but functions of the MINIX API might be listed later (after the NetBSD man-pages have been merged in.) Please consult the source code when writing a man-page. Some utilities may have more, less, or different features than they do on other operating systems or in the POSIX specification. Some utilities have been ported from the BSD operating systems; in which case, you may be able to port the associated man-page, as well. Make sure, however, that what is written in the man-page corresponds to the functionality in the version that was ported to MINIX.

Out of Date Wiki Pages

As minix grows and changes, the wiki pages that describe it also need to grow and change. This section lists wiki pages that have fallen out of sync with the code.

Broken packages

Packman is obsolete, please contribute pkgsrc packages only (see DevelopersGuide/TestingPkgsrc)

This page keeps the results of the analysis of package building back in 2009-2010. The packages below no longer compile, even though they did at some point in the past.

When trying to fix them, you can follow these instructions:

• mkdir /usr/bigports/packagename /usr/tmp/packages

• svn checkout https://gforge.cs.vu.nl/svn/minix/trunk/bigports/packagename /usr/bigports/packagename

• binpackage /usr/bigports/packagename /usr/tmp/packages

Replace packagename with one of the names as listed below. The binpackage tool attempts to compile the package, and provides error messages. If you manage to fix the package, please use svn diff to obtain a patch, and post that on the MINIX newsgroup.

Please also add dependencies for packages. Create a .bdeps file with a list of build dependencies and .rdeps with run-time dependencies. Those files should be plain-text files with a package name on each line.

Proper packages do not install any files outside the /usr/bsd, /usr/gnu and /usr/local directories. The first is used for ported BSD components, the second GNU programs, and the third one for everything else. For libraries, one also should take into consideration the compiler that was used to compile it, because ACK and GCC have incompatible library formats. Use either /usr/local/lib/ack or /usr/local/lib/gnu to express that difference. In many cases, the install location can be passed to the configure script or makefile as a parameter.

The following values are possible for the Status field:

• broken: the package does not compile;

• badpaths: the package compiles, but installs files to incorrect paths;

• proposed: some 'diff'es have been posted on the newsgroup;

• attempted: someone tried to fix the package but failed, adding the reason to the Comments field, and removing one's name, in order to allow others to work on it.

If you made a patch to improve a package, please add a link in the Comments field. Once all issues are resolved, and the fix for a package has been committed to SVN, the package is removed from the list.