Introduction to OSDN, The First Step

The goal of this document is to help you start software development at OSDN. The text here is not compete yet, and over time, there will be more functions added to OSDN. So the main purpose here is to help you to start a new project with a step by step guide. First, we'll talk about the most probable situation that a new developer is likely to encounter. Let's say you already keep a directory for source code, and you may already have an active code repository, or you may be thinking you want to use all the functions provided by OSDN to start a brand new open-source project. Or you may be hoping to attract new developers and many users to your project.

The First Step to Start a New Project

Here is the summary of procedure followed by details.

1. Register to OSDN as a new user
2. Log in to your user account and create a new Project or personal Chamber (PersonalForge)
3. Set up information on Group, Project or Chamber
4. Create a code repository for the latest snapshot of source code
5. If it's a project, set up a project Web site for the group
6. Get used to SCM tools and start working
7. Release a file module in a way to be noticed by people

And there may be a few more things that need to be done...

• Read OSDN Site Ducuments

Now, let's get started!

1. Register to OSDN as a new user

If you have already created an account at OSDN, you can certainly skip this step.

Click on create an account which you can find in the menu displayed at the upper right of OSDN top page. Once you register your personal information (name, mail address, and so on) there, your user account will be set up. To do any activity involving things like exchanging information at OSDN, you will need a user account. Once you've gone through this process, you can login as a user any time.

By logging in, my page (home page) will be displayed. Things like Projects that you are involved in or your personal Chamber will be listed there along with the information regarding them. You can access to my page at any time by clicking the title logo or home page icon at the top. By selecting from the menu bar which you can see at the top of my page, you can browse your public information, history/statistics of your activities, and so on.Also, from “user setting”, which you can find at the far right of the menu, you can make all kinds of changes with the settings of your account. (The link to “user settings” can be found at the top of the page.)

2. Login to your user account and create a new Project or personal Chamber (PersonalForge)

You can create a Project or personal Chamber from your home page or the "development" menu which you can see at the top.

There are buttons like "Create Project" or "Create Chamber" on the home page or "Develop" page, so click there. You will be able to smoothly carry out the procedure from the beginning to the end. All necessary information is provided there.

Regarding personal Chamber, once you enter the information, a Chamber will be created. Regarding Project, after you enter the information, it will be sent to OSDN admin staff for evaluation. Once it's approved to meet OSDN's goal, your Project will be created, and it should take about only a few hours if there's no complication. If it is open source, you will get the permission right away.

It shouldn't take more than 24 hours for you to receive an answer regarding your creation of a new Project. (But if you don't receive an answer, ask for confirmation via email.)

Once your request goes through successfully, the Project will be created, and you will be registered as the project manager. You should be able to see the registered Projects from your my page.

3. Set up information on group, Project or Chamber

Click on the link to your Project page. Now you are looking at the Developer Dashboard page of your Project.

First, click on the “Admin” button to jump to the “Admin Summary” page. Here, you can check the current information on the Project. At the top part of the page, there's a list of settings that are recommended to be (must be) done when you are starting the project. They are all listed up with links to each setting page. We recommend that you follow the order of the list.

All the settings for the project itself can be set up from this “admin” menu. Also, if you enable the project's functions (some functions are already enabled by default), each function will have its menu displayed just the same. You can set up the settings for each function from “Admin” which you can find at the bottom of the menu.

4. Pull in the source code

Let's pull in the project's source code from source code management system. At OSDN, we recommend that you use Git or Subversion. (For other option, you can also use Mercurial(Hg) and Bazzer. )

5. Set up a group web site

Let's say the project members want to host a web page or a web site, that has already been structured to provide some information, on OSDN. In that case, use SSH to login to OSDN. For example,

ssh -l login_name shell.osdn.net

I'm guessing you are at your home directory. From now on, all of the group files will be stored at /home/groups/x/xx/YourProject. Now, log out, and make a copy of a file of your web page, using program's scp which is attached to the SSH. For example,

scp File login_name@shell.osdn.net:/home/groups/x/xx/YourProject/htdocs

We recommend that you choose gzip for the site. Now, use scp to send it all at once. Then log in with SSH and gunzip the file.

Now, what would you post on the web page? Probably some information of your project, like the ones below.

• Link to OSDN's project page

• Link to mailing list or Forum (We'll get right on it!)

As for initial condition, sample of html file including these information is provided within the htdocs directory. If you are planning to use this file by adding some modifications, you will have to copy it first, because it doesn't permit direct editing.