Hi Anrea,
Andrea Pescetti schrieb:
janI wrote:
On 9 May 2013 00:23, Rob Weir wrote:
5) Development is also made more difficult by the intrinsic complexity
of the code base, the build system and the poor state of the developer
documentation.
yes because we try to tell people to grasp the whole system in one-go
"start by build AOO", that is a nice way of making a developer feel
insecure.
What can be done to improve this? Building OpenOffice is the first step
for any core code contributor, I can't understand why this makes people
feel insecure. But it's a critical point, so whatever we can do to
improve this stage will help.
First build on Windows is a nightmare.
For example, impatient people who do not use "./configure --help" will
have a hard time figuring out the errors with dmake and epm, and
downloading the prebuilt unowinreg from
http://www.openoffice.org/tools/unowinreg_prebuild/ could be simplified
or automated... But none of this seems a tremendous improvement to me.
Can we do better? Does
http://wiki.openoffice.org/wiki/Documentation/Building_Guide_AOO
need some rewriting?
Yes! It is useless for first Windows build.
Better is
http://wiki.openoffice.org/wiki/Documentation/Building_Guide_AOO/Step_by_step
My suggestion would be to change the entry page
http://wiki.openoffice.org/wiki/Documentation/Building_Guide_AOO in a
pure index with links to the other topics.
Topics are for example:
- For each OS a separate page "Your first build on ..." Such should give
a step-by-step instruction containing all what is needed to get a first,
simplified build.
- Topics, which are special for some OS. For example on Linux using
system libraries, on Windows getting ATL.
- Building special kinds, for example including languages, non-pro build
- Tips to make build faster, for each OS separate
- Tips to avoid building clean all the time
- Tips how to test the own build
After building there are further barriers:
- Lack of documentation about data types, for example try to understand
all the string types you see in the code. Such documentation has to
include a "best practice" for actual code and in addition a description
of old, deprecated solutions, which are still in the code.
- Lack of an overview. There is already a start in
http://wiki.openoffice.org/wiki/Source_code_directories, but with focus
on directories. A documentation with focus on tasks (which task is
handled in which class) is missing.
- A documentation about helpers is missing. For example a guide to use
OpenGrok. Or a guide how to debug, again specific for each compiler.
Such things are not a given for undergraduates for example.
So in short, the documentation has to be improved.
Kind regards
Regina
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