Area 51

In the KDE3 days, around FreeBSD 5, the repository where KDE ports were developed was called Area 51 -- the famous place where aliens land. We still refer to the ports-development repository as Area 51, even though it is no longer called that in hostname or repository name.

Development of the Qt and KDE ports maintained by the KDE on FreeBSD team happens in the area51 repository. New versions and changes the ports are always committed there first and only later hit the ports tree. Even though the ports in the area51 repository are not always in a stable state, users are encouraged to test them and report problems, especially during the call for tests periods.

The area51 repository is hosted on [[1]]. The history of commits is recorded in the KDE on FreeBSD mailing list. The workflow is roughly the same as the [development workflow|XOrg ports] workflow, or the GNOME ports: a complete git clone of the ports tree is kept, branches work on specific updates, and that gets merged to ports master when things are ready.

HIC SUNT LEONES

Source Organization

See the XOrg ports pages.

Packages and Build Status

The current status of some of the branches of the area51 repository can be seen in the FreeBSD Continuous Integration (CI) system, which is a Jenkins instance kindly hosted by one of the team members. The build status can be found [[2]]. These builds are done from the area51 ports repository, on both 11-STABLE and CURRENT.

Packages may be obtained from the unofficial package repository that is created by the Jenkins CI system. To use these packages, you may add a repository configuration file /usr/local/etc/pkg/repos/area51.conf as follows:

area51: {
  url: "http://meatwad.mouf.net/rubick/poudriere/packages/110-amd64-area51/"
  priority: 2
  enabled: true
}

It is strongly advised to disable the official FreeBSD package repository when installing from this unofficial repository, to avoid mixing packages from multiple sources. Set enabled: false in the repository configuration file for the official FreeBSD package repository while testing area51 packages.