The SDG-Hive Pheromone [July 2002]

[Alex Lancaster]

         The (occasional) SDG-Hive Pheromone [July 2002]
         ===============================================

More a quick update than a true Pheromone, here's a quick overview on
the state of all things Swarm.  Read on to get the goods on:

1. Development snapshots (or which version should I get?)
2. New development site for Swarm at Savannah: savannah.gnu.org/projects/swarm
3. Swarm now available via anonymous CVS
4. Contributions section update
5. SDG Membership update

Some of these things have been in place for a while, and have never
been "officially" announced or had current information on the website
until now (such as snapshot releases), others are relatively new (such
as the Savannah site).  The website has been updated to reflect these
changes.

Currently we are a purely volunteer-based project (we have no paid
staff at this time).  However, we don't necessarily want to stay that
way, so please consider including SDG in your research budget via
joining as group member or by including SDG as collaborators (more
updates on SDG membership later in this Pheromone).  Although a
substantial donation via a group membership is the best way we can
hire new staff, don't forget you can also join as an individual!

Regardless of the current financial situation, it's also time to start
making Swarm a truly community-led effort, so anybody interested in
taking responsibility for various tasks (some of which are listed on
the savannah site), please contact us!  We are very close to a Swarm
2.2 release, but we need volunteers to help us go the extra distance
with testing, packaging and working hard on the current codebase to
get 2.2 out.  Without either your financial and technical support, we
may not ever see a 2.2 release!

1. Development snapshots (or which version?)
============================================

Our current releases are:

    * Stable release: 2.1.1
    * An unstable, development "snapshot".

Which version should I get?

The development snapshot (note that this a *pretest* version of Swarm
2.2, NOT the final Swarm 2.2 release) is the only release which we are
currently actively maintaining, and is the only version that we make
bugfixes in.  Swarm 2.1.1 was released on 10 April 2000, and is now
over two years old.

The development snapshots are recommended for just about everybody who
intends to make any serious use of Swarm.  Windows XP users have no
other choice.  There are full "pretest" versions of the distribution
for Windows and also for Red Hat Linux.  More information on how to
download these snapshots (and links to the FAQ for further details)
can be found at:

  http://www.swarm.org/release-swarm-snapshot.html

To whet your appetite, these are some improvements to look for: In
Swarm 2.2pretest, there are a number of handy new features, including
enhanced Lisp serialization of C arrays and Swarm arrays.  There are
many enhancements in the use of the Averager class that make it easier
for users write programs in which agents keep diagnostic information
on their observations (including moving averages).  There are
significant conveniences in the way EZGraph sequences can interact
with the user's program.  Swarm 2.2pretest has accelerated random
number generators, significantly enhanced scheduling tools for the
randomization of events that arrive on the same "spot" in the time
sequence.

Casual users who simply want to test drive Swarm and the demo
applications can continue to install a stable binary package

  http://www.swarm.org/release-swarm.html#release-packaged

(Note that these binaries will continue to drift out of date,
e.g. there are no 2.1.1 packages for Red Hat Linux > 6.2, so be
warned!):

2. New development site for Swarm at Savannah!
==============================================

Swarm is moving much of our active development to our new project site
at: 

 http://savannah.gnu.org/projects/swarm/ 

part of Savannah (savannah.gnu.org) run by the Free Software
Foundation (www.gnu.org).  Savannah hosts free software projects,
exclusively.  Please get involved by submitting bugs, viewing active
tasks or especially submitting patches!

Please become an active developer by registering at:
 
 http://savannah.gnu.org/account/register.php 

for an account at Savannah which will allow you to post bug reports,
add tasks, and help us track contributions.  You will also need to
register for us to be able to add you with write access to the CVS
repository.  Swarm is a collaborative free software enterprise, so we
need your help, both technical and financial!

Savannah is intended the central point for the community to help
continue develop and extend Swarm.  The current Swarm source is in
CVS, and I will be gradually moving over other applications (such as
swarmapps and jtutorial, jheatbugs etc.) and the website source from
their current location on the SFI cvs server, so that Savannah will be
the central point through which we can continue to co-ordinate the
development of Swarm and help recruit new developers into the fold.

As indicated above, Savannah also has all the bug tracking, task and
patch management facilities that exist in open-source sites like
SourceForge (in fact it's a branch of SourceForge) and we would really
like these to be used as the main vehicle through which we manage the
project, fix bugs and so on...

3. Swarm now available via anonymous CVS
========================================

The Swarm CVS repository is now available via anonymous CVS
(www.cvshome.org) at via our project page at Savannah!  You can browse
the source on the web:

 http://savannah.gnu.org/cgi-bin/viewcvs/swarm/

or see the instructions on how check it out to your machine:

 http://savannah.gnu.org/cvs/?group=swarm

4. Contributions
================

The section on the ftp site for contributed Swarm applications has
changed considerably.  We now split up package by language (java or
objc), and within that by contrib packages (which now includes all the
packages that used to be in the old eval and anarchy) and sdg packages
(the core applications that the SDG maintains), so the hierarchy now
looks like this:

 apps/
     java/
          sdg/
          contrib/
     objc/
          sdg/
          contrib/

Instructions for contributing have also been updated, we request that
submissions follow the LSM naming conventions standard, and we no
longer have an "incoming" directory.  See:

 http://www.swarm.org/community-contrib.html

for more information on all these changes.

5. SDG Membership update
========================

The ever-tireless Paul Johnson has created an updated list of members,
and member pages at:

 http://www.ku.edu/~pauljohn/sdg/member_pages/

If you are a Swarm user, you should be an SDG member.  Memberships are
more important now than ever, without them we will not be able to
continue to offer new Swarm releases.  So, please contact Paul Johnson
at <address@hidden> if you wish to join or renew your membership!

Paul hopes to eventually make this page our main data base of Swarm
projects, programmers and publications, and it will eventually be a
swarm.org subdomain (most probably "members.swarm.org").  Currently
there is already a page for most currently paid-up members, so if you
are a member, and have not otherwise done so, please go and update
your page.

Alex
-- 
  Alex Lancaster           |  e-mail: address@hidden
  Swarm Development Group  |     web: http://www.swarm.org
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