There are many reasons to like looking at open source software, one of which is the ability to learn from the code that others have built.

Other examples include:

• Follow the error notice
• See new features merged into the code base
• Learn how to achieve something programmatically
• View deprecation of old features
• Get expected (or perhaps surprising) new features
• there are more

Although there is a lot of open source software out there, it can be difficult to know how to keep up with such a pace of development when you are unfamiliar with the tools.

If you are an experienced developer who knows how to use bug trackers, version control, etc., then you are not the target audience for this tutorial. However, if you are a fan of WordPress and want to know how to keep up with the development of your project, then read on.

In this article, we’ll look at what nightly builds are, how to prepare our systems to get the latest version of WordPress source code every day, and how to use it ourselves.

What is a nightly build?

Before we understand how to get the latest version of the source code every day, it is important to understand the definition of a "nightly build".

This sentence is not unique to WordPress. In fact, many software, both open source and closed source, include nightly builds. Whether we as the public have access to them is another matter.

Even Wikipedia defines this in the simplest of terms:

An event that occurs once a night.

Then again, the phrase itself doesn’t exactly sound like a technical term, does it? It doesn't matter.

Since we are talking about WordPress, and WordPress is open source, we will look at it from this perspective. According to the WordPress project’s Nightly Builds page:

You can track changes on the web or through our SVN mailing list, but many people choose to run nightly builds to help us identify bugs. If you would like to participate in this process, please join the WP testers mailing list and download the latest nightly build.

If you are interested in getting involved more than just getting the source code and following the steps above, please visit the link above. In the rest of this article, we'll look at what's required to get a nightly version of your source code.

Use Subversion for version control

There are many different version control or source control services and applications available. WordPress projects use a self-hosted version of Subversion to handle version control of the project.

If you are new to Subversion, you can learn more on the software's home page. However, Subversion has been around for quite some time and is widely used in many different companies and projects.

Subversion is an open source version control system. Founded in 2000 by CollabNet, Inc., the Subversion project and software has experienced incredible success over the past decade. Subversion has been and continues to be widely adopted in the open source and corporate worlds.

This tutorial won't provide an in-depth guide on how to use Subversion and everything you can do with it, but it will give you everything you need to know to install Subversion on your computer and get the latest version of the WordPress source code .

1. Install Subversion

Subversion can be used in one of two ways:

1. As a command line tool
2. Has graphical user interface

Subversion User Interface

Because Subversion is so widely used, you have many different clients to choose from, no matter which operating system project you work on.

For example:

• TortoiseSVN is available for Windows.
• Cornerstone and version available for OS X.
• And RapidSVN for Linux.

Of course, these are just a few of the options you have. No matter which operating system you are using, one thing we all have in common is that Subversion is available as a command line tool, so we will be using that in this tutorial.

Command line tools

Installing Subversion via the command line depends on the operating system you are using. If you are using Linux, you will need an installer of some kind. If you're using Windows or Mac OS X, you'll need one for each system.

Once installed, the commands we issue in the terminal for the rest of this tutorial will be the same.

First, navigate to the Subversion Binary Packages page and find the version that corresponds to your operating system.

Second, download the installer, step through the steps provided, and then return to this tutorial.

Finally, we need to make sure Subversion is installed correctly. To do this, open a terminal (or command prompt if you are using Windows) and enter the following command:

$ svn --version

You should see something similar to this printed in the console:

This will contain a line of information including the version of the Subversion client. For example:

svn, version 1.7.22 (r1694152)
   compiled Feb 10 2016, 16:22:46

But the actual output you see may be slightly different. The bottom line is, if you are able to execute the svn command, you should be able to follow the rest of the steps in this tutorial.

2. Prepare local directory

Before getting the latest copy of WordPress, we need to make sure we have a directory set up where we will download the latest source code.

For me, since I'm on OS X, I would place them in /Users/tommcfarlin/Downloads. Therefore, all my commands will be relative to this directory. Your directory will be related to whatever directory you choose for yourself.

So, within my Downloads directory, I will create a directory called wp that will house the source code we are looking at from the official repository. In the terminal, enter the command responsible for creating the new directory.

For me, that’s:

$ mkdir wp

Now I have an empty directory into which I can pull the WordPress source code via Subversion.

3. View the latest code

The act of pulling the latest version of source code from a Subversion repository is called "checking out." Therefore, to view the latest version of WordPress, we need to issue the Subversion command on the command line.

This requires a few things:

1. Subversion command for inspecting source code (simply, co).
2. The URL of the repository (https://core.svn.wordpress.org/trunk/) from which we will pull the source code.

Using this information, first change the directory within the wp directory you just created, then issue a Subversion checkout command using the provided URL. The complete set of commands will look like this:

$ cd wp
$ svn co https://core.svn.wordpress.org/trunk/

Once completed, the terminal should start printing information as it is pulling the latest version of the source code.

One very important thing to note is that this is great for experimentation. Do not try to push any code to the repository (you will need to submit patches in a formal way, which is beyond the scope of this tutorial).

Think of this as an easy way to get "read-only" source code.

4. Run install

At this point, you should see a trunk directory inside the wp directory you created before this step. Trunk is a Subversion naming convention through which the main line of development of a project is completed.

Technically, the directory can be named anything you want; however, the general convention used when working with Subversion repositories is:

• Branch
• tag
• trunk

If you navigate to the trunk directory using the command line or even your operating system's user interface, you will see the directory structure familiar to WordPress applications.

This means you can actually set up a working version of WordPress just like downloading it from the project homepage.

In my previous post, I detailed what you need to install a WordPress application. If you are new to WordPress, check out this tutorial as it will provide you with all the information you need to get up and running with WordPress.

If you have already read it or are familiar with how to set up a local copy of WordPress, then please continue:

• Set the hostname for the directory using a web server
• Navigate to this URL in your web browser
• start installation

When completed, you will be running a cutting-edge copy of WordPress that includes all features under development. If you've never done this before, it would be really good to see what's coming downstream in the next release.

You can update the code from the repository

You will need to update it as you continue to use the source code or want to ensure that you are using the latest version of the source code.

由于我們使用版本控制，因此可以輕松使用 Subversion 來更新駐留在我們計(jì)算機(jī)上的代碼副本。每當(dāng)您準(zhǔn)備更新（可能是每小時或每天晚上）時，您只需從 trunk 目錄中發(fā)出以下命令：

$ svn update

這個命令將拉取自您上次查看最新版本的源代碼以來合并的所有代碼。請注意，當(dāng)您這樣做時，您將面臨破壞安裝中某些內(nèi)容的風(fēng)險，但這就是運(yùn)行前沿夜間構(gòu)建的本質(zhì)。

關(guān)于夜間構(gòu)建的說明

雖然本教程的主要目的之一是引導(dǎo)您在計(jì)算機(jī)上安裝 Subversion 并使用它來查看 WordPress 源代碼，但您也可以隨時使用此 URL 獲取最新版本的 WordPress。

不，這絕不是獲取源代碼的“漫長之路”。相反，它是為了讓您通過使用日常使用 WordPress 時使用的工具和流程，更多地以開發(fā)人員的身份工作。

結(jié)論

無論您是想查看每天推送到 WordPress 核心的所有新內(nèi)容，還是希望最終為應(yīng)用程序提供補(bǔ)丁，訪問每晚版本的代碼都是非常有趣的.

如果沒有別的事，訪問 WordPress 等開源項(xiàng)目（有數(shù)百人正在積極致力于該項(xiàng)目）可以教會您很多有關(guān)處理錯誤報告、票證、補(bǔ)丁、功能、合并等的知識.

我不建議在本地開發(fā)環(huán)境之外的任何地方運(yùn)行此代碼。也就是說，如果您是一名開發(fā)人員并且您有興趣測試前沿的代碼，則夜間構(gòu)建可以讓您做到這一點(diǎn)。

對于那些有興趣繼續(xù)了解有關(guān) WordPress 的更多信息的人，我們專門提供了幾門關(guān)于此主題的課程。除此之外，我們還在市場上提供了大量插件供您下載、學(xué)習(xí)和在日常工作中使用。

如果您有興趣從開發(fā)角度了解有關(guān) WordPress 的更多信息，請注意，我專門使用 WordPress，并且經(jīng)常撰寫相關(guān)文章。您可以在我的個人資料頁面上觀看我的所有課程和教程，也可以在我的博客和/或 Twitter（@tommcfarlin）上關(guān)注我，我在其中談?wù)?WordPress 背景下的軟件開發(fā)。

請隨時在下面的提要中留下任何問題或評論，我會盡力回復(fù)每個問題或評論。

資源

• Subversion 主頁
• 下載 Subversion
• 顛覆手冊
• WordPress Subversion 訪問
• WordPress 每夜構(gòu)建
• 安裝 WordPress