Programming Environment

FreeBSD

The operating system for all our servers.

Apache

The webserver.

mod_backhand

Load balancing for the server cluster.

Wackamole

Cluster failover management.

MySQL

The database.

Perl

Used for all the CGI and supporting scripts. Although we quite like C++, we chose to use Perl instead as it is much easier for volunteers to get to grips with and is a very powerful tool for mangling data around (which we obviously do a good deal of). If volunteers want to use a different language, that's OK with us, so long as we can run it, of course.

Various CPAN modules

CPAN has many useful Perl modules. We use some of them.

CVS

The version control system we use for all the source code and web pages. Anyone wanting to help really must use this. A zipped file containing the correct versions of CVS and SSH to run on Windows for use on the project can be downloaded here (cvs_ssh.zip), and there is also a page of instructions on how to install and run them.

SSH

Used for all remote access. We don't like telnet. It's dangerous.

If you reckon you can do useful stuff in the environment outlined above, and want to help, drop Ben a line.

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