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.
Git: The main tool we use in the software development process is Git, a distributed version control system developed by Linus Torvalds amongst others. Linus is also a prime developer and coordinator in the development of Linux. Software developed for FreeUKGenealogy is maintained in repositories on GitHub. All developers developing and maintaining source code of systems used by FreeUKGenealogy must use Git and GitHub and support for this can be provided.
GitHub is also used for tracking and resolving issues with the software.
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.

Volunteering Opportunities

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