Bonsai (software)

Last updated
Bonsai
Developer(s) Mozilla Corporation, Mozilla Foundation
Operating system Cross-platform
Type Continuous integration
License Mozilla Public License
Website www.mozilla.org/projects/bonsai/

Bonsai is a web-based CVS repository browser designed for large programming projects. It was initially developed to fill the Mozilla project's need for good tools to allow multiple developers to edit its extremely large codebase.

The Concurrent Versions System (CVS), also known as the Concurrent Versioning System, is a free client-server revision control system in the field of software development. A version control system keeps track of all work and all changes in a set of files, and allows several developers to collaborate. Dick Grune developed CVS as a series of shell scripts in July 1986.

Mozilla Free and open-source software community, developer of Firefox and Thunderbird

Mozilla is a free software community founded in 1998 by members of Netscape. The Mozilla community uses, develops, spreads and supports Mozilla products, thereby promoting exclusively free software and open standards, with only minor exceptions. The community is supported institutionally by the not-for-profit Mozilla Foundation and its tax-paying subsidiary, the Mozilla Corporation.

Contents

Features

Among other features, Bonsai allows complex queries to be performed, as well as near real-time updates of check-ins to the CVS server. Bonsai is released under the Mozilla Public License, [1] and is thus free software.

The Mozilla Public License (MPL) is a free and open source software license developed and maintained by the Mozilla Foundation. It is a weak copyleft license, characterized as a middle ground between permissive free software licenses and the GNU General Public License (GPL), that seeks to balance the concerns of proprietary and open source developers.

Free software software licensed to preserve user freedoms

Free software or libre software is computer software distributed under terms that allow users to run the software for any purpose as well as to study, change, and distribute it and any adapted versions. Free software is a matter of liberty, not price: users—individually or in cooperation with computer programmers—are free to do what they want with their copies of a free software regardless of how much is paid to obtain the program. Computer programs are deemed free insofar as they give users ultimate control over the first, thereby allowing them to control what their devices are programmed to do.

History

Bonsai was founded by Terry Weissman. It was first written in Tcl, then later ported to the Perl programming language. It still uses Perl, but runs off a MySQL database, and can be served using any Perl aware webserver, such as Apache.

Tcl is a high-level, general-purpose, interpreted, dynamic programming language. It was designed with the goal of being very simple but powerful. Tcl casts everything into the mold of a command, even programming constructs like variable assignment and procedure definition. Tcl supports multiple programming paradigms, including object-oriented, imperative and functional programming or procedural styles.

Perl interpreted programming language

Perl is a family of two high-level, general-purpose, interpreted, dynamic programming languages, Perl 5 and Perl 6.

MySQL SQL database engine software

MySQL is an open source relational database management system (RDBMS). Its name is a combination of "My", the name of co-founder Michael Widenius's daughter, and "SQL", the abbreviation for Structured Query Language.

See also

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Bugzilla Web-based general-purpose bugtracker

Bugzilla is a web-based general-purpose bugtracker and testing tool originally developed and used by the Mozilla project, and licensed under the Mozilla Public License.

GNOME System Tools (GST), previously known as Ximian Setup Tools and Helix Setup Tools, is a set of configuration programs for Linux and other Unix-like operating systems. It consists of a set of 'backends' which manipulate the system's configuration files, and generate XML descriptions of the current state, and frontends, generally written in C, which are GUIs for the GNOME desktop environment.

ViewVC

ViewVC is an open-source tool for viewing the contents of CVS and SVN repositories using a web browser. It allows looking at specific revisions of files as well as side-by-side diffs of different revisions. It is written in Python and the view parameters can be modified directly in a URL using a REST style interface.

Multi-licensing is the practice of distributing software under two or more different sets of terms and conditions. This may mean multiple different software licenses or sets of licenses. Prefixes may be used to indicate the number of licenses used, e.g. dual-licensed for software licensed under two different licenses.

Open-source software development is the process by which open-source software, or similar software whose source code is publicly available, is developed by an open-source software project. These are software products available with its source code under an open-source license to study, change, and improve its design. Examples of some popular open-source software products are Mozilla Firefox, Google Chromium, Android, LibreOffice and the VLC media player. Open-source software development has been a large part of the creation of the World Wide Web as we know it, with Tim Berners-Lee contributing his HTML code development as the original platform upon which the internet is now built.

The CVSNT Versioning System implements a version control system: it keeps track of all changes in a set of files, typically the implementation of a software project, and allows several developers to collaborate. It is compatible with and originally based on Concurrent Versions System (CVS), which has become popular in the open-source world.

LXR Cross Referencer, usually known as LXR, is a general-purpose source code indexer and cross-referencer that provides web-based browsing of source code, with links to the definition and usage of any identifier.

Komodo Edit

Komodo Edit is a free text editor for dynamic programming languages. It was introduced in January 2007 to complement ActiveState's commercial Komodo IDE. As of version 4.3, Komodo Edit is built atop the Open Komodo project.

In 2006, a branding issue developed when Mike Connor, representing the Mozilla Corporation, requested that the Debian Project comply with Mozilla standards for use of the Thunderbird trademark when redistributing the Thunderbird software. At issue were modifications not approved by the Mozilla Foundation, when the name for the software remained the same.

License compatibility is a legal framework that allows for pieces of software with different software licenses to be distributed together. The need for such a framework arises because the different licenses can contain contradictory requirements, rendering it impossible to legally combine source code from separately-licensed software in order to create and publish a new program.

The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to free software and the free software movement:

The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to the Perl programming language:

A free license or open license is a license agreement which contains provisions that allow other individuals to reuse another creator's work, giving them four major freedoms. Without a special license, these uses are normally prohibited by copyright law or commercial license. Most free licenses are worldwide, royalty-free, non-exclusive, and perpetual. Free licenses are often the basis of crowdsourcing and crowdfunding projects.

Tara Hernandez software developer and open source contributor

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References

  1. "Mozilla Code Licensing".