Re: honor to join NetBSD community

[coypu%SDF.ORG@localhost]

Hi Charles!

I'm also doing a summer of code project in netbsd, although in a
very different area (I'm doing the web interface for NPF/blacklistd).

On Wed, Apr 27, 2016 at 06:11:28PM -0700, Charles Cui wrote:
> 2. How do you work in netbsd, do you use GUI (like xwindow, or gnome)?
> If so, which
> do you recommend? I installed Xwindows several times, but seems have
> some problems.

NetBSD is my daily driver, so I use it for everything :-)
It has almost every package you'd expect - LibreOffice, Octave,
Firefox, etc.

If you complete a full NetBSD installation, running `startx` should
give you a running Xorg with twm (a simple window manager).
Email netbsd-users@ with more details if you have issues with it.

Creating a ~/.xinitrc containing something like "dwm" (in my case)
should override the default .xinitrc and run dwm instead of twm.

I've got Xorg running with a window manager from the pkgsrc/wm
directory called dwm. It's not similar to GNOME, so I don't recommend
it to most people.

I think the shiniest window manager that works in NetBSD is MATE:
wip/mate. I haven't tried to use it, so I can't tell you how well it
works.

(wip is a directory of pkgsrc kept in a separate repository - see
http://pkgsrc.org/wip/ - that is open for everyone to contribute to.
wip is an acronym for 'work in progress', so it's very new).

Hopefully we'll get GNOME 3 working soon, but at the moment that is not
available - only GNOME 2 is.

> 3. What tools do you use to view kernel code? do you use IDE or just
> vim(emacs)?
> Actually, it is hard to look the code, jump to the declaration or
> usages because netbsd
> has a huge code base. I am looking for a way to work efficiently with
> netbsd, your
> best practices would be helpful.
> 

I also prefer to browse with nxr. some people use vim+ctags, but I
haven't gotten around to trying that yet.

If you wonder what a function does when reading code, `man function`
often explains it (the man pages are also available online, if you
don't have NetBSD running at the time). You can search man pages with
apropos.

It's worth noting that netbsd can be built from most operating systems
with ease (it's the exact same command).
When I am stuck with a weak machine, I access a friend's (linux) machine
and build it there, and even run it via qemu over ssh.