Retrieving The Code

The Alexandria project uses the Subversion version control system to manage the codebase. Basically, Subversion will allow you to have a copy of the source code on your machine, and sync the code with the master server, while keeping track of the history of your edits. It will also allow you to write to the server if you have write privileges, which means the core developers.

For more information on Subversion, read the following in increasing order of detail:

• Wikipedia On Subversion
• A Subversion tutorial
• Version Control With Subversion – This is a book, and pretty thorough

Users of Canonical’s Bazaar or git, and perhaps some other VCS systems may also interface with the Subversion repository using plugins. To use Subversion to retrieve the Alexandria source code, use the following command:

svn://rubyforge.org/var/svn/alexandria/trunk/alexandria alexandria

This will download all the necessary files that make up Alexandria. Be sure to use the ‘svn update’ command to regularly obtain the latest source. You can also subscribe to the alexandria-commits mailing list, although this can be a little flaky (commits to SVN don’t always show up straight away, and occasionally commit mails are lost in the ether).