LinuxMCE Forums
General => Users => Topic started by: colinjones on May 04, 2009, 08:11:59 am
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Software Developers are geeks!
Geeks like gadgets
LMCE is the ultimate gadget...
Then why, from this simple sylogism, do we not have a plethora of development resources on this project?
Problem: the LMCE development team is tiny, and this is now seriously hamstringing the progress of LMCE in bug fixes, releases, new features, etc.
However, there are many hundreds of non-developers active regularly on these forums....
Request: I would like everyone to have a good long think about everyone they know personally (friends, family and acquaintances) and professionally (colleagues, associates, historical and current), and try to come up with at least 5 developers you can think of that you could personally spend some time introducing them to LMCE and generally being a LMCE "evangelist". The objective is to get them interested at a personal level in LMCE for their own use, but also to try to entice them into thinking of it as a potential personal project they could contribute to.
Another approach is to post here suggestions of organisations, groups, teams, projects and contacts that might provide an angle for us to approach, and getting people we don't yet know involved in the project. For instance, someone has suggested the Google Summer of Code annual project. We need to access sources of FOSS programmers and encourage/entice... our most serious problem is exposure....
Come on guys, lets get innovative, find ways to network and hook into others that could help us out!!
Either way, please post here - how many people you thought of and whether you have approached them yet; any suggested entities/approaches to get introductions to other developers we do not yet have contact with; and other innovative ideas for raising the exposure of LMCE in a way that is likely to find new sources of development skill.
Remember the objectives of all these points are not to find new users, but to find new development resources.... if we were to lock down only 5 new pairs of hands, after the learning curve, in 3-6 months we will have at least doubled our development capacity.
This is a task for YOU, not the developers!! GO GO GO!
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I plan to look into the GSoC and Season of Usability for next year.
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What about teaching some of use newbies that have no idea how to develop stuff.
I am 1 example. I have the will but not the knowledge. I know what an IDE is but tats as far as my programming skills go. I am slowly learning though.
Are people like me of any use????
Can people like me help move things along??
Cheers
chipppy
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What about teaching some of use newbies that have no idea how to develop stuff.
I am 1 example. I have the will but not the knowledge. I know what an IDE is but tats as far as my programming skills go. I am slowly learning though.
Are people like me of any use?
Can people like me help move things along??
Cheers
chipppy
I second that, not so much the teaching part but a 'how to start developing' on the Wiki may be good. I know there is a 'programming guide' but that assumes a certain level of knowledge. The page I am talking about may be as simple as - go get these books and read them. Hopefully it includes a section of code with explainations of what is doing what.
Personally, I have tried some scripting (http://forum.linuxmce.org/index.php?topic=7636.0 (http://forum.linuxmce.org/index.php?topic=7636.0)) but struggled a little. Some pointers would be great.
Thanks,
Techstyle
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I've asked tschak999 to provide guidance... He's thinking about the best approach before posting. Have you seen this: http://wiki.linuxmce.org/index.php/Developers_Guide ? It gives much more details than the 'programming guide'.
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I have looked at both, the programmers guide sites the developers guide as a better place to start.
I look forward to Thom's guide.
Thinking about this more, I am sure there are areas that are easier than others and it may be good to start the beginners (like me) on things like device templates and basic scripts (if these are a good starting point?) which will give the community the best return on developers investment (trainning literature time). just a thought
Techstyle
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I agree.
-Thom
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yes, device templates are a good place to start. You can use the protocol documents for said device you want to create the template for as a guide on how the template should be created.
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I second the idea with the templates. Since tschaak came up with the video about how to use the Designer, more and more guys came up with ideas, PoCs etc. even whole implementation. I get some kind of frustrated when i do a whole reinstall with my specific hardware. e.g. DVB-T-USB-Sticks, my DVB-T PCI card. As far as i know, everything could be handled via templates, that communicate with the DCE. The templates can download stuff, make/compile, install new code all this... AS it is mention some time "guys, create templates for your stuff, for the sake of the community", i guess some of us would take a shot to support even more hardware as most of us have specific at their home. Am i asking for "Create-LMCE-Templates/Packages-for-Dummies"?... i guess i DO! ;O)
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I could imagine that schools or universities could be a good place to find help. Maybe as some sort of project that students could participate. They could program new functions as a semester work or something like this?
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I could imagine that schools or universities could be a good place to find help. Maybe as some sort of project that students could participate. They could program new functions as a semester work or something like this?
I would bet there are a few students on this forum...
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For sure. But if they'd program anything they probably do it in their free time.
Maybe there are universities that would create projects that count for their studies?
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For sure. But if they'd program anything they probably do it in their free time.
Maybe there are universities that would create projects that count for their studies?
Do you want to look into this?
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I want to, but I can't at the moment. :(
Until September I have absolutely no time and I have no clue, what have to be done in LinuxMCE.
But I could give you the address from ETH in Switzerland. I'm studying electrotechnics there and there are also lots of informatics students.
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Does anyone on the list (preferably in Europe) want to take on this task?
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What do you mean
Contact universities?
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I'd be more than happy to help. I currently work as a software dev for an options trading company. Most of my work is PHP and MySQL based, but I'm pretty flexible as far as platforms go. I'll also pass the word around to my co-workers, maybe one or two will also be interested. Just pulled up the programming and developers guides and I'll be going over them now. Let me know what you need me to get started on.
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I'd be more than happy to help. I currently work as a software dev for an options trading company. Most of my work is PHP and MySQL based, but I'm pretty flexible as far as platforms go. I'll also pass the word around to my co-workers, maybe one or two will also be interested. Just pulled up the programming and developers guides and I'll be going over them now. Let me know what you need me to get started on.
Jimmy, welcome! We'd definitely love to have you and your friends help us out. PHP skills are definitely needed when trying to work on the Web Admin and of course MySQL skills are great. DCE, and its devices are written mostly in portable ANSI STL C++, referencing constants, and data inside the database, code and data are tightly coupled.
You can also write DCE devices in Ruby using the Generic Serial Device (GSD), which is a wonderful way to write small simple device controls very quickly.
We also use shell scripting, perl, and awk for underlying system script integration and for synchronization between some parts of the subsystem (i.e. between our Asterisk DCE device, the Telecom Plugin, and Asterisk).
Feel free to drop by the #linuxmce-devel channel on freenode to chat with us.
-dlewis
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I'd be more than happy to help. I currently work as a software dev for an options trading company. Most of my work is PHP and MySQL based, but I'm pretty flexible as far as platforms go. I'll also pass the word around to my co-workers, maybe one or two will also be interested. Just pulled up the programming and developers guides and I'll be going over them now. Let me know what you need me to get started on.
Jimmy, welcome! We'd definitely love to have you and your friends help us out. PHP skills are definitely needed when trying to work on the Web Admin and of course MySQL skills are great. DCE, and its devices are written mostly in portable ANSI STL C++, referencing constants, and data inside the database, code and data are tightly coupled.
You can also write DCE devices in Ruby using the Generic Serial Device (GSD), which is a wonderful way to write small simple device controls very quickly.
We also use shell scripting, perl, and awk for underlying system script integration and for synchronization between some parts of the subsystem (i.e. between our Asterisk DCE device, the Telecom Plugin, and Asterisk).
Feel free to drop by the #linuxmce-devel channel on freenode to chat with us.
-dlewis
The Web Admin stuff would probably be the smoothest transition for me, however I do have shell scripting experience and I've thrown enough hacks together with perl and awk to be fairly proficient. Never messed around with Ruby much, but as far as I can tell it's just sloppy C (like PHP and others) The C++ would probably take me a bit to be useful but I'm willing if it's needed. I'll see ya around on #linuxmce-devel sometime.
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Hi,
Some stuff about me.
I currently work as an Oracle devloper programming PL/SQL scripts. My job also involves a lot of VBA devlopment.
I have a lot of experence in programming C++ on a windows PC.
I have devloped websites using drupal which has given me experence in LAMP (linux, apache, mysql and PHP)
I am also looking for a weekend project to get my teeth sutck into.
I have got a linuxMCE machine wirrhing away in the corner and I am trying to convince my self to use it and throw out my Windows Media centre but there are lots of niggling issues with usability. (I fequently start trying to watch something on my LinuxMCE PC, then get fed up and switch back to the windows one.)
I am thinking getting involved might mean that I can get stuck into fixing some of these issues that are stopping me let go of windows Media centre.
I should point out that I am not a linux hack. Over the last couple of years I have used ubuntu more and more. I spent the last week building an xorg.conf file for an ubuntu system to get the display working right. I am expanding my experence though: e,g, writing bash scripts and php programs:
http://wiki.linuxmce.org/index.php/Setup_Automatic_podcast_download#Step_4_-_Add_your_own_podcasts
Does anyone see a place for someone like me on the devlopment team?
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Does anyone see a place for someone like me on the devlopment team?
Yes, there is always room for someone on the dev team... I'd suggest first looking at the development documents on the wiki. Then, get your LinuxMCE system back up and running with 0810 and play around with it for a little bit. Once you get comfortable, look at Trac and see some of the bugs we have open and talk to us about which ones you want to tackle...