Difference between revisions of "Developer Central"

Revision as of 21:56, 10 April 2009

The purpose of this page is to give a link to all kinds of resources that contain information valuable to current and future developers of ScummVM.

Getting started

The first thing you need to be able to do is compile ScummVM.
Some hints on debugging ScummVM.
Before you write/submit code, you must read about our Code Formatting Conventions. Patches which do not follow them will be rejected or at least delayed until they are cleaned up to comply to them.
Also, please read and respect the Portability Guide.
If you have write access to our repository, you are expect to have read and to comply to the Commit Guidelines.
Our Doxygen source code documentation may help you to get the big picture about ScummVM.
Also, you might want to check our list for current Platform Limitations

For Engine authors

If you want to provide a new Engine for ScummVM, check out our Engines HOWTO.
If you work on a game engine for ScummVM, consider implementing Advanced Engine Features.
If your engine supports multiple games / game variants, properly detecting and differentiating them all can be a nuisance. Use the Advanced Detector to overcome this hurdle.
Accessing files in a portable fashion is non-trivial. Read all about how to open files.

For Backend authors

If you want to port ScummVM to a new platform, check out our Backends HOWTO.

Projects, plans, things to do

List of open tasks, with relatively detailed descriptions, and contact points. Some rather small ones, some bigger ones, take a look.
Small Devices Backend -- this is under development as part of the GSoC, but additional help is welcome.
Keymapping Improvements -- still in the design stage. Help is welcome.
Music drivers redesign -- in phase of discussion

TODO lists

New GUI

Release Management

Our release guideline for ScummVM Release HOWTO
Our release testing status for the latest stable release Release Testing

CVS/SVN statistics

Our commit logs are fed to several freely available statistics tools:

FishEye SVN statistics
FishEye CVS statistics prior to Feb 6th, 2006
CIA SVN statistics, current development
ohloh project analysis nice graphs and devs activity
Koders statistics

Mailing Lists

Primary channel for important development-related discussion is scummvm-devel mailing list. All developers should subscribe to it.

The full set of public lists are:

scummvm-devel -- development-related discussions
scummvm-cvs-logs -- commit logs. Basically we're on SVN now, but the list name was not changed
scummvm-tracker -- Notifications of all new bugs, patches and feature requests. If you subscribe to this one you'll just be notified about *new* tracker items. If you want to keep track of an arbitrary tracker item you have to use the "Monitor" option/button on the page of that tracker item.

There is one note about scummvm-cvs-logs and scummvm-tracker. Consider them as a read-only lists, i.e. if you have comments/questions on someone's commit, post your follow-up to scummvm-devel.

IRC

For all kinds of live discussions we use #scummvm @ freenode.net IRC channel. All ScummVM developers get an operator status there, so if you have some questions, talk to them. There are several notes about usage of this medium:

IRC is not the best place for informing everyone about some important development conclusions. I.e. when you discussed something and came up with a solution, it's best to e-mail results to scummvm-devel. That is, don't expect everyone in the team to know that you uttered something at #scummvm.
All developers who want to get operator status should register with NickServ. Assistance with registration is provided here.
Most people on FreeNode have so-called anti-spam feature turned on. That is, you will not be able to PM them unless you registered with NickServ

We have several bots living there:

LeChuck -- our own bot. It's primary usage is infobotting and logs.
lisppaste -- paste bot. It notifies when ScummVM-related pastes are posted here
CIA -- commit notification bot. It notifies on all commits. Further information could be found on CIA.vc site
cmeme -- IRCbrowse log bot. Believed to be defunct, logs were available at here
ScummBot -- build bot. It notifies when one or more ports change their status. There's more information on the Buildbot page

IRC logs are stored at:

logs.scummvm.org -- Not updated when LeChuck is down

Misc

MIME types, useful for setting the svn:mime-type.
Documentation on how we performed our CVS to Subversion conversion.

@@ Line 7: / Line 7: @@
 * Also, please read and respect the [[Portability Guide]].
 * If you have write access to our repository, you are expect to have read and to comply to the [[Commit Guidelines]].
-* If you want to provide a new Engine for ScummVM, check out our [[HOWTO-Engines|Engines HOWTO]].
-* If you want to port ScummVM to a new platform, check out our [[HOWTO-Backends |Backends HOWTO]].
 * Our [http://doxygen.scummvm.org/ Doxygen source code documentation] may help you to get the big picture about ScummVM.
 * Also, you might want to check our list for current [[Platform Limitations]]
@@ Line 17: / Line 15: @@
 * If your engine supports multiple games / game variants, properly detecting and differentiating them all can be a nuisance. Use the [[Advanced Detector]] to overcome this hurdle.
 * Accessing files in a portable fashion is non-trivial. Read all about [[HOWTO-Open_Files|how to open files]].
+== For Backend authors ==
+* If you want to port ScummVM to a new platform, check out our [[HOWTO-Backends|Backends HOWTO]].
 == Projects, plans, things to do ==
 * [[OpenTasks|List of open tasks]], with relatively detailed descriptions, and contact points. Some rather small ones, some bigger ones, take a look.
 * [[Small Devices Backend]] -- this is under development as part of the GSoC, but additional help is welcome.