IBPhoenix Development

Firebird Development

A resource for developers working on the Firebird Project on Sourceforge.

• Current Development Activity
• Current CVS Source Tree
• Snapshot Builds
• Bug Listings
• Building Firebird V1.0x
• Building Firebird V1.5 & 2.0
• A Guide to Future Versions of Firebird
• Core Engine Development Status Reports
• Developer Documentation
• Developers' Resources

Current Development Activity

• View All Recent Activity
• View the Change Log for Firebird V2.0.x
• View the Change Log for Firebird V2.1.x
• View the Change Log for Firebird V2.5.x
• View the Change Log for Firebird V3.0.x

Current CVS Source Tree

• Accessing the Source and CVS Instructions
• Firebird V1.5 Source Code (.tar.bz2) (4.2mb)
• Firebird V1.5.1 Source Code (.tar.bz2) (4.4mb)
• Firebird V1.5.2 Source Code (.tar.bz2) (4.6mb)
• Firebird V1.5.3 Source Code (.tar.bz2) (5.0mb)
• Firebird V1.5.4 Source Code (.tar.bz2) (5.0mb)
• Firebird V1.5.5 Source Code (.tar.bz2) (5.0mb)
• Firebird V1.5.6 Source Code (.tar.bz2) (5.0mb)
• Firebird V2.0 Source Code (.tar.bz2) (11.9mb)
• Firebird V2.0.1 Source Code (.tar.bz2) (11.9mb)
• Firebird V2.0.3 Source Code (.tar.bz2) (11.9mb)
• Firebird V2.0.4 Source Code (.tar.bz2) (11.9mb)
• Firebird V2.0.5 Source Code (.tar.bz2) (13mb)
• Firebird V2.0.6 Source Code (.tar.bz2) (13.1mb)
• Firebird V2.1 Source Code (.tar.bz2) (12.9mb)
• Firebird V2.1.1 Source Code (.tar.bz2) (12.9mb)
• Firebird V2.1.2 Source Code (.tar.bz2) (13.0mb)
• Firebird V2.1.3 Source Code (.tar.bz2) (13.0mb)
• Complete CVS root repository (tar.bz2) (60mb+).

Snapshot Builds for Firebird

Snapshot builds, are daily builds taken from the current CVS source code tree. These are intended for Firebird developers and experienced beta testers. It is generated automatically, and as such it is untested and comes with no guarantees.

• Windows Snapshot
• Linux Snapshot

Bug Listing

• Bugs, feature requests etc. can be found on the Firebird Tracker.

Building Firebird 1.0x

To build your own version of Firebird from the CVS tree you will need to either have an existing running Firebird or InterBase installation. However the Firebird boot kit will allow you to build either the CLASSIC or SUPERSERVER versions of Firebird without having to install a binary version of the server first.

• Unix Build/Boot Kit (.tar.gz) (474kb)

Windows Build Batch Files
Are now included as part of the CVS tree. This replaces the original instructions on building InterBase for Windows. You are going to need MVC++ V5 or later, Borland Make and Touch. Additionally, some parts of the build require ImpLib and Brc32. These are all shipped with the freely downloadable Borland C V5.5 compiler.

Building Firebird V1.5 & 2.x

Can be built using:

• Normal makefiles and autoconf (requires GNU make): ReadMe.
• Microsoft Visual C++ V6 and V7: ReadMe.
• Msys/Mingw (Minimalist GNU for Windows) not working at present: ReadMe.

Developer Documentation

Documentation for open source developers working with the Firebird source code.

Source Code Firebird 1.x

• High-level Description of the original InterBase 6.0 Source Code
• Detailed Description of the Firebird Source Code
• The OSRI Architecture
• Macros used in the Firebird/InterBase source code
• jrd Data Types
• Request Compiler (jrd/cmp.c) functions
• Adding New Messages to msg.gdb

Source Code Firebird 2.0

• RAII - Resource Acquisition Is Initialization

Build Process

• Description of metadata.gdb/yachts.gdb
• High level description of the Firebird 1.0x build process on Unix
• Instructions on building Firebird 1.0x on RedHat 6.2
• Instructions for building Firebird 1.0x on Linux from CVS
• How to Build Firebird 1.0x on HP-UX 11
• InterBase 6.0 .rpm build/installation scripts
• How to install Firebird on MacOS X/Darwin
• Tracking Down Crashes on Win32 Systems
• Tracking Down Crashes on Linux
• Maximum database sizes on Window File Systems
• How to build Firebird 1.5 Classic on HPUX 11
• The Rough Guide to building Firebird V1.5x on MacOSX

ODS (On Disk Structure)

• Space Management In Firebird/InterBase
• The Firebird/InterBase On-Disk Structure
• Structure of A Data Page

Engine

• Request Handles and What They Do
• How to Write an Internal UDF Function (.pdf)

CVS and Subversion

• Introduction to CVS
• Introduction to Subversion
• SSH Overview
• SSH Key Generation
• CVS Client - Command-line CVS client with OpenSSH
• CVS Client - TortoiseCVS with PuTTY
• CVS Client - WinCvs with PuTTY
• Subversion Client - Command-line SVN client
• Subversion Client - TortoiseSVN

Character Sets and Collations

• Building New Character Sets for Firebird
• WIN_CZ: Building a Case Insensitive Czech Language Collation for the WIN1250 Character Set
• Firebird Collation Charts

Developers' Resources

Documentation and tools to aid developers working on the code.

• Coding Style Guides