Open Source Hosting Sites

I just found out that Sun is starting a new site to host Open Source code.  So, I thought I would take this opportunity to list out the repositories of Open Source Code:

• Project Kenai
• Source Forge
• Google Code
• Tigris
• Launchpad

Then, I found that Wikipedia has an excellent comparison of the sites.

Writing Eclipse Plugins

I found an excellent article about writing Eclipse plugins and publishing them on SourceForge.  I hope to work on a project like this soon.

Plugging into SourceForge.net

Creating a SourceForge Project with Eclipse

I have been wanting to try my hand at an open source project. The new project is ContactDB.

First, I had to create my SSH key. I followed the OpenSSH instructions here.

This is the command that I used to create the key:

ssh-keygen -t dsa -C "myusername@shell.sourceforge.net"

• Remember to replace the “myusername” with your actual user name.
• I used the default location to save the key (/home/myuser/.ssh/id_dsa)
• I entered a passphrase.

Once I had the key generated, I opened the file in a text editor: /home/myuser/.ssh/id_dsa.pub and copied the new line that I just created. On my account page at SourceForge, under the section “Host Access Information”, I clicked “Edit SSH keys for Shell/CVS”. I pasted the line that I copied into the large textbox and clicked update.

I couldn’t do the initial import in Eclipse for some reason.  So, from the command line:

 CVS_RSH=ssh; export CVS_RSH
 export CVSROOT=:ext:myusername@contactsdb.cvs.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/contactsdb
 cvs import -m "initial project files" contactsdb initial start

In Eclipse, I created a new workspace. Then, I created a new project (File, New Project …). For the type, I chose CVS, Projects from CVS.

Next, it asked me for the repository location information (remember to substitute contactsdb with your project name):

• Host: contactsdb.cvs.sourceforge.net
• Repository path: /cvsroot/contactsdb
• User: you user name
• Password: the password you set in the SSH key generation
• Connection Type: extssh
• Port: Use default port

Next, Eclipse asked me to select a module. I chose the “Use specified module name”, and I chose my project name for the module (“ContactsDB”).