Programming Environment

We use entirely open source software for the programming and running of FreeBMD. Here is a (possibly not comprehensive list):

FreeBSD: The operating system for all our servers.
Apache: The webserver.
HAProxy: Load balancing for the server cluster.
MySQL: The database.
Perl: Used for all app code 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. We run Perl both as CGI scripts and under mod_perl.
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: Remote access.

Other UKGEN projects make use of additional software available on the same servers:

Ruby: Some apps are based on Ruby on Rails running under Passenger.
MongoDB: A document oriented database.

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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