This directory is set up for 3 way use. Mostly you have to be root to do anything useful in this sort of development 1) It is a debian native source directory. You can generate a new debian package by doing: ./debian/rules clean ./debian/rules build ./debian/rules binary ./debian/rules clean The first clean is just in case you forgot the last time. It is best to do it so that things are left in good shape if you are using this directory in another mode. The end result is a new .deb package of the same name as this directory. That is why the directory is in the standard debian format. 2) Each of the major subdirectories is a separately updateable cvs repository. Thus other people can work on parts of the system rather than the whole one. So you use the usual cvs commands to sync with the repository, for example: cd Fault/lib cvs update Or to commit your own changes to the repository, for example: cd Fault/lib cvs commit 3) Each of the perl module subdirectories is a standard CPAN style perl source module. You can install just that module locally by doing the usual CPAN commands: cd Fault perl Makefile.PL make make test make install So keep this in mind on anything you do. It's convenient to be able to do all of these things.