SFW

We're happy to announce the release of the Sun FreeWare (SFW) consolidation buildable tarball.

The SFW consolidation is a home for open source software delivered in Solaris and supported by Sun. It contains software that either is required by other consolidations or Sun considers critical to the Solaris business. You can view a current list of software in this consolidation.

Download / Compile / Install / Bugs

 Visit the Build Instructions page for details on how to download, compile, and install the software included in this consolidation.

 If you need help, the sfwnv-discuss@opensolaris.org discussion list is available for SFW-related topics.

 You can file bugs against any of the components through bugs.opensolaris.org. Existing bugs against components in this consolidation are published through bugs.opensolaris.org under the 'solaris' product. Here's a quick overview of the categorization:

• Bugs related to build and delivery tools or the structure or organisation of the consolidation or the gate itself are in consolidation/sfw.
• All other bugs are in one of the following categories, whichever is most appropriate: 'driver' or 'kernel' for source found in usr/src/uts, 'library' for source in usr/src/lib, 'utility' for source in usr/src/cmd, 'network' for a small subset of networking-specific tools, or 'solaris_print' for printing tools.
• With the exception of those subcategories of solaris_print, the subcategory name must be the same as the name of the software's top-level directory (that is, the directory names under usr/src/cmd, usr/src/lib, etc.).

Contributions

 For now, this consolidation will be run almost identically to the ON consolididation

. There will be semi-regular drops of the source tarball, and contributions will be taken under guidance of a sponsor.

 We welcome contributions, but want to communicate a few specific guidelines up front:

• Support of software is expensive for Sun, so we can't take new pieces of software into this consolidation without a strong business case. For inclusion of unsupported software, we're looking to start the discussion soon about a location (currently known as Companion Software or the Companion CD) where any open source software can be packaged for OpenSolaris and contributed on opensolaris.org.
• Other consolidations have many dependencies on the SFW consolidation. If you plan to propose upgrading to a new version of any included component, expect your sponsor to request you do extra testing and coordinate testing with other groups. Expect this testing to take significantly longer than the code changes took you.
• Any new software needed to build parts of SFW beyond what's already in Solaris must also be included in SFW.

 If you're ready to contribute a code change, request a sponsor by mailing request-sponsor@opensolaris.org.