From thinstation

Welcome to the ThinStation Developers Guide

These pages are for developers and those who want to dig under the covers of ThinStation

Contents 1 Thinstation 2.x 1.1 Packages 1.2 Compiling 2 Thinstation 3.x 3 Other Stuff

Thinstation 2.x

This document will help You get started with ThinStation development and outline many design considerations and conventions used.

Please note, that there is a developers mailing list as well as #thinstation IRC channel at FreeNet which can be used for discussion.

The v2.x versions are using the existing (and traditional for Thinstation) chrooted compile environment. This may change for v2.4 where we could have a Virtual Appliance (ThinSource) that contains all of the tools etc. to compile & build Thinstation within that Virtual Appliance (this has NOT been decided yet).

Packages

Adding your own extensions to Thinstation does not necessarily require compilation. The Thinstation build environmnet will build (construct) a bootable Thinstation image from the already compiled packages.

These packages include the binaries/scripts of your application, plus the additional supporting libraries and scripts to integrate the application into the Thinstation environment.

The following topics cover

• Create your own Package

The latest version of the build environment is available as a download from the sourceforge download page and all packages are now being kept the SVN Repository of SourceForge. Just use the Code=>SVN Browse item from the Menu and look under:

• ThinStation/branches/ for the current development
• ThinStation/Releases/ for stable releases

Compiling

If you really want to do some heavy changes or updates you may be required to compile / recompile your selected application and associated libraries or even the kernel and kernel modules.

To do this Thinstation has it's own compile environment.

• Compile your own package
• Compile a new/updated kernel driver
• Kernel Compile 2.x
• Kernel Upgrade

Specific examples:

• Adding the e1000e drivers into 2.2.2
• Adding madwifi Drivers
• Recompiling the kernel for the Ebox 2300SX (vortex86SX)

The source for the Thinstation compile environment, kernel and all core packages can be downloaded in one tarball via the download tab (Note: Thinstation 2.2.2 source is just a delta on the Thinstation 2.2.1 source. Please see Getting the 2.2.2 source on how to do this).

We are planning to host the base source from version 2.4 in the SVN Repository of SourceForge (but it's not there yet)

Thinstation 3.x

A separate group have created a partial build of ThinStation using the openembedded environment as a base (v3.x). More details about using this version and approach can be found at:

• 3.x Development

Other Stuff

Thinstation uses a few packages internally that are not particularly well documented, or the documentation is very hard to find on the web (these packages are used to try to keep the size down).

Where we can, we have included the known usage information here:

• xwChoice