wiki:NewbieDeveloperSetup

Version 11 (modified by zooko, at 2012-10-08T17:30:22Z) (diff)

add link to wiki:CompileError

Attention: this page is for Tahoe-LAFS developers. If you are not a Tahoe-LAFS developer, then the page you want is quickstart.rst.

see also wiki:Installation, wiki:Dev, wiki:Doc, wiki:Manual, and wiki:CompileError

Newbie Developer Setup

As I'm progressing my first steps in hacking tahoe-lafs I thought it might help others and this is what you're reading now. Be bold editing and improving this doc, since I'm not even familiar with Python and lots of you can document your own 'best practices' for other newbies.

I will use Eclipse IDE because of wide use and availability. But just because I'm used to it. You might have your preferred tools. I'm on Ubuntu.

  1. Set up your OS. (I tinker a lot with mine so I maybe miss some). You have to install python in your OS for tahoe to run. Most Linux distributions have it in their software repositories.
  1. tahoe-lafs source code is hosted on darcs repositories (will move to git at some point). Get darcs running in your machine. For Ubuntu just do this from a shell: sudo apt-get install darcs
  1. Get the code from the main repo this way
  1. IDE: Install Eclipse + PyDev in your platform. You can start from a "classical" Eclipse install and add the "Software sites" URL http://pydev.org/updates. You can then go to 'Install new software' menu item and add PyDev? from there.

(to be continued...)

  1. (ToDo?) Run the tests
  1. ...
  1. Learn to use the logging system
  1. Learn how to submit patches
  1. Dive into the code! See some tips for diving into Tahoe's source code and follow the coding standards when you're ready to code.
  1. Learn how to write tests. Patches and new code should pass the automated testing before being eligible to be merged (see this comment). There is a list of patches needing tests if you want to get your feet wet.