Re: [Gnash-dev] How can I participate?

[Rob Savoye]

On 12/30/09 05:58, MÁTÉ Gergely wrote:

> I am a student in CS in Hungary. I just passed my C++ exam, studying
> Algorithms, and I would like to learn practical programming by
> participating in the development of the GNASH client. I'm asking for
> guidance and mentoring. I know my limits, so "sweeping the backyard"
> sounds like a good start.

  I think for many people, hacking on a free software project is good
experience, and more fun than sitting in classes. :-) So the first thing
to do is what you just did, you got on this mailing list. We also often
discuss stuff on irc, #gnash on freenode.net, and put other useful info
on our http://www.gnashdev.org wiki.

  Then you'll want to get your PC setup, installing all the dependencies
Gnash from trunk needs to build and run, including all the other
packages we use for testing. Then you want to get comfortable with the
basics of configuring, building, and testing. As we use Autotools, you
may already know this part from other packages. None of this should take
much time. While you're installing all this stuff, you'll probably want
to go through the wiki and/or the reference manual to get some
familiarity with Gnash.

  As far as a place to start hacking, often the simple thing is to work
on implementing or completing one of our Actionscript 2 & 3 class
definitions, and the associated test case. (gnash/libcore/asobj/flash/*)
After that you'll probably find something to do next, and just go from
there....

  We usually ask new developers to contribute a few patches first,
either using the savannah patch manager, or this email list. After those
first informal code reviews, then we grant write access to the
repository. You'll want to get on the gnash-commit email list too, so
you can see all changes as people make them, and any code or design
review discussions.

        - rob -