NTP Software Development

New users should consult the documentation page before contacting the NTP development team with questions.

Bugzilla

Tracking of NTP development concerns is done using Bugzilla, an open-source bug tracking system developed by the the Mozilla team. Our Bugzilla server is located at bugs.ntp.org. All users need a unique Bugzilla account, which can be created from the Bugzilla page. Users are encouraged to report bugs or suggest enhancements.

Source releases and patches

The development tarballs available in the HTTP archive are, by and large, not suitable for production work, but the dev team produces development tarballs to provide users with specific needs the ability to get semi-stable software with important, new features that may not be available in the stable tree.

Tarballs (for both the current release and development versions) are available from the software downloads page. Patch files, and other tarballs, are available in the HTTP archive.

BitKeeper

The NTP source is maintained in a BitKeeper repository.

For some history on this decision please see WhyBitKeeper.

Please note that if you are behind a firewall then you will need to open port 14690/TCP in order to use the bk://whatever URLs.

The open-source BitKeeper client only pulls sources from the BitKeeper repository. There's no way to commit changes or to create patches etc.

Tools Needed to build from a BitKeeper repository

You must have the following tools to use the BitKeeper repository version of NTP:

• autoconf - Version 2.61 or later. We use the latest version.
• autogen - Version 5.14 or later. We use the latest version. (Optional tool)
• automake - Version 1.11 or later. We use the latest version.
• guile - needed by autogen.
• libtool - Version 1.5.something (this is a guess - we use something recent).
• lynx - Any version. We use this to generate the COPYRIGHT file.
• the Google Test package - Version 1.5.0 or later, from http://code.google.com/p/googletest/downloads/list, if you want to run the test framework.

Using the opensource BitKeeper client

The opensource BitKeeper client is available from http://www.bitmover.com/bk-client2.0.shar .

Build and install the client. Run bkf help to see what it will do.

To get a fresh copy of ntp-dev type the following:

   bkf clone bk://bk.ntp.org/ntp-dev ntp-dev

Once you have obtained the sources, do the following, using REPO as the directory the repository was downloaded to (e.g. ./ntp-stable or ./ntp-dev):

   cd ntp-dev
   ./bootstrap (To generate configure and Makefile.ins)

and you should be ready to go.

You can keep your repository up-to-date by running:

   cd ntp-dev
   bkf pull
   ./bootstrap

Using the commercial BitKeeper client

The NTP Public Services Project is using the commercially licensed BitKeeper product. Project Committers may use this software for their project-related efforts, if they so choose; instructions for this are available at Info:GettingBk .

Once you have installed BitKeeper, you can clone the NTP repositories using the following commands:

For the ntp-stable repository, to ./ntp-stable:

   bk clone bk://bk.ntp.org/ntp-stable ntp-stable

For the ntp-dev repository, to ./ntp-dev:

   bk clone bk://bk.ntp.org/ntp-dev ntp-dev

Once you have obtained the sources, do the following, using REPO as the directory the repository was downloaded to (e.g. ./ntp-stable or ./ntp-dev):

   cd REPO
   ./bootstrap (To generate configure and Makefile.ins)

and you should be ready to go.

You can keep your repository up to date by running:

   cd REPO
   bk pull

For help on a BitKeeper (bk) command (e.g. clone), use bk clone --help.