On May 2, 2008, at 4:19 PM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > Welcome Nicolas, > > Firstly I'd like to say that I think Eric's advice is excellent. > > Becoming a contributor to an already running, in motion open source > project is actually a lot of work, and has a high failure rate, even > for an experienced programmer. It takes a decent amount of time and > effort to get 'up to speed'. >
I am definitely aware of this, especially given the organically grown design of the project. I can see that there is a lot of code history, which makes touching things without introducing side effects or regressions difficult. > I would recommend following Eric's advice and looking at the > 'EasyCoding' page. Also, hang out on #wesnoth-dev on irc.freenode.net. > People come up with little requests for things to be done all the > time. Look for something someone wants, try and see if you can > implement it, submit a patch. Do this a few times, and in no time at > all, hopefully you'll be a valued part of the community! > Sounds good. > If you've got experience on embedded devices, we'd love for someone to > investigate the feasibility of porting Wesnoth to the iPhone/iPod > Touch. But that could probably wait until you're more familiar with > the code. > On this note, I am curious as to what profiling has been done on the project. > A developer who can work on both clients and servers effectively is > also something very valuable for us. For instance, there are a number > of improvements to both the multiplayer server and the add-on server > that we'd love to have. Once again, #wesnoth-dev is probably the best > place to come to discuss. > > ....and of course there are many, many other areas for improvement > that we'd love to have contributions in. :) > > David > > Quoting "Eric S. Raymond" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > >> Nicolas Grunbaum <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: >>> I was hoping that >>> if I described my areas of knowledge that people could recommend >>> something I could get my feet wet with, while not stepping on toes >>> or >>> doing unnecessary work. >>> I am professionally a developer that has worked mainly on large >>> servers and on embedded stacks in c++. >>> I have not done any Windows development, my primary work >>> environments >>> being OS X and Linux. >>> I have some experience with profiling and unit testing. >>> I have very little python experience. >> >> You sound very well qualified, actually. Your lack of Windows >> experience >> is not an issue, as most of our Windows dependencies are confined >> either >> within SDL (which we use but don't hack) or in filesystem.cpp, >> which is >> pretty stable. Weak Python chops aren't a problem either; between >> elias >> and Sapient and myself we have enough Python wizardry to cover our >> needs. >> >> Your embedded C++ experience, on the other hand, is exactly the >> sort of >> expertise we're chronically short of. We need more people who are >> better C++ coders than me :-). >> >> Have you seen the EasyCoding page on the wiki yet? >> >> http://www.wesnoth.org/wiki/EasyCoding >> >> We've made an effort to describe C++ coding tasks we think are >> relatively >> easy and provide a good entry to the code. >> >> On the other hand, if you're interested in learning more Python, one >> of our other to-dos that you sound well equipped for is translating >> the campaign server to Python (not the MP game server, but the >> simpler >> one that serves addons). This one has been on my list, but the >> ability to rapidly grasp what the existing C++ is doing is probably >> more important than extreme Python fluency and you might have an edge >> there. >> >> I suggest you hang out on the #wesnoth-dev list at >> irc.freenode.net. Many >> project devs, including me, will usually be available there to give >> you >> a bit of real-time guidance. >> -- >> <a href="http://www.catb.org/~esr/";>Eric S. Raymond</a> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> Wesnoth-dev mailing list >> [email protected] >> https://mail.gna.org/listinfo/wesnoth-dev >> > > > > > _______________________________________________ > Wesnoth-dev mailing list > [email protected] > https://mail.gna.org/listinfo/wesnoth-dev _______________________________________________ Wesnoth-dev mailing list [email protected] https://mail.gna.org/listinfo/wesnoth-dev
