There are binaries for Linux for the 386 already available and
the sources are freely available.
A brief extract from the Users Guide
(available at ftp://riftp.osf.org/pub/ode/doc/UsersGuide.txt)
"The OSF Development Environment (ODE) is designed to allow
simultaneous development on multiple revisions of a single
set of sources to be compiled for a variety of different and
essentially incompatible hardware platforms. At the same
time it must satisfy the needs to ship complete,
reproducible systems to customers while being flexible
enough for individual development.
Three basic areas to ODE are:
+o Source code control
+o Build Environment
+o Private and Public work areas
Each area must allow the individual developer to work
independently of other developers, yet allow Release
Engineering to bring this work together on a regular basis
to create systems for testing and release.
The source control mechanism protects a public revision of
each file while allowing developers to simultaneously modify
private revisions. It provides controls so these private
changes, once they have been built and tested, can be merged
back together and integrated with the public revision.
Finally, source control provides a method for reproducing
earlier releases for bug fixes.
The build environment works with source control to
facilitate the building of systems for both release and
individual development. It provides a standard set of
tools, header files, and libraries allowing official systems
to be duplicated while giving developers the flexibility to
insert their own tools and files as needed. Much of the
details of how a system is to be built is embedded in the
ODE common makefiles and the build tools. Within ODE the
build environment "knows" a great deal about how the system
is to be built."
ODE uses RCS for source code control. It can be set up to enforce
users to enter change histories with updates.
It is not a trivial excercise to move to ODE, but once you start
using it, it is hard to imagine how you ever did without it.
Cheers
Dany