[weehuy]

Hi I'm looking to find a mentor, I've searched the forum and found this thread http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid...ght=mentor but didn't want to hijack or post to a dead thread. I'm looking for someone who can point a newbie in the right direction for development or even QA to get familiar with the project.

I've read the http://wiki.xbmc.org/?title=HOW-TO_help_...ce_Testing but it's still pretty daunting. If anyone is willing to let me kind of shadow their step by step process, I'd be willing to document it, in an effort to help more people like myself.

[spiff]

there's no step by step process here, it's all about stamina.

find some small part of the app you are interested it. read code. then read code. additionally, read some code. and maybe change some code. until you understand how it works. rince and repeat. that's how i did it, that's how all of us did it. yes, it's daunting, but if you are motivated enough, and keep pushing, you'll get there. if you want an example; get a grasp of the vfs. xbmc/FileSystem/. that's how i started.

we gladly answer specific, informed questions. but until then you are on your own.

[CrashX]

Probably a good idea to introduce yourself ? What are you good at ? What have you done in the past ?

[gnif]

I got into it by hacking at various errors that were appearing in the logs, and then grew to hacking the audio layer, stepping on dev's toes (sorry phi), and eventually learn't enough to make some not so hack-ish changes that people liked and filled some gaps in XBMC. Just as spiff said, stick to it, and you will be rewarded eventually

[weehuy]

Thanks for the responses everyone.

As an introduction I'm actually not a developer by trade, I'm actually a bioeng dabbling around in development. I've done some light work in the past mostly medical software bugs fixes here and there. I'm just trying to help xbmc because I've used it forever (since xbox) and think it would be a good way to get more practice on larger development projects.

I think mostly what I was trying to get at was I feel I could help if I could find a good start problem to work on. I feel like there might also be many other newbie developers who are in a similar situation. For example gniff you said you were hacking a various errors in the log which I assume was off a traq ticket? How did you find a suitable problem, are there any tips you guys have for filtering it down?

I'll continue pounding away but if you guys have any ideas on where to start that isn't too dependent on external libraries or spread across 30 files I'd appreciate heads up.

[jmarshall]

I'd suggest that fixing bugs is probably the best way to ease into things. Which platform do you develop on?

Here's some that shouldn't be too bad to get you started:

http://trac.xbmc.org/ticket/9094
http://trac.xbmc.org/ticket/9093 (warning, scraper related - get your HTMLEncoding googles on)
http://trac.xbmc.org/ticket/9049 (possibly win32-only)
http://trac.xbmc.org/ticket/9021 (arabic from plugins, charset related)
http://trac.xbmc.org/ticket/8943 (feature - adding skip to the export builtin)
http://trac.xbmc.org/ticket/8903 (mouse bug)
http://trac.xbmc.org/ticket/8873 (feature - consistency of episode counts)
http://trac.xbmc.org/ticket/8866

Have fun, and don't hesitate to ask for directions.

Cheers,
Jonathan

[AaronD]

Thanks for this list - useful for me as well while I am trying to learn the code. I'm claiming #8873 since it fits well into what I know so far

[jmarshall]

Great

All I did is clicked on "Bugs (Newest first)", ignored everything playback and xbox related and cut 'n' paste the links. Will discuss with the trac gods about a flag for specifying whether something is an "easy" fix or a "hard" fix, as then we can auto-generate such lists (after someone flags them appropriately, ofcourse).

Cheers,
Jonathan

[weehuy]

I think I figured out #8866. Anyone care to make sure?
http://trac.xbmc.org/ticket/8866

[weehuy]

I've submitted patches for

http://trac.xbmc.org/ticket/8903
http://trac.xbmc.org/ticket/8866

I think they are right but if someone more experienced could take a look in case I did something wrong.