2 Getting started

GSRC is distributed directly using the Bazaar version control system or via a compressed archive. You can check out the latest version from the Bazaar repository using

$ bzr checkout bzr://bzr.savannah.gnu.org/gsrc/trunk/ gsrc

This will create a directory gsrc. The build definitions for GNU packages are in the gnu subdirectory. Large sub-projects, such as GNOME, have their own subdirectory containing packages (i.e. gnome). The external subdirectory contains references to dependencies which you may have to install outside of GSRC, such as via your GNU/Linux distribution’s package manager (APT, Pacman, Yum, etc.). If these dependencies are required for a given package and are not found on your system, you will be automatically notified. Finally, the decommissioned directory contains former GNU packages that have been decommissioned.

Each package has its own subdirectory within its parent directory, for example gnu/emacs or gnome/evince. Package directories contain a config.mk file for configuring the package and a Makefile for building it. This Makefile will automate the usual ./configure and make commands needed to build a GNU package.

To stay up-to-date with the latest releases of GNU software, you can pull in recent changes to your local copy of GSRC:

$ bzr update

Alternatively, quarter-annual “snapshots” of GSRC are made available for download at http://ftpmirror.gnu.org/gnu/gsrc.