Thank you for your interest and willingness to help. With that said, you have picked one hell of a project to dip your feet into.
LinuxMCE is a formidable project that encompasses multiple platforms, and millions of lines of its own source code, not counting the appropriation of multiple free and open source projects. It is a battle field wrought with land mines, lots of hidden traps, bullets flying everywhere, and just all out insanity at times...but it is also very fun, and engaging, and well worth it when you see something you've created actually come to life.
There are a wide range of places you can help. Of course, documenting things on the wiki is paramount. It is true that information here can often get outdated etc as things change, but it does provide a living record of the things we work on.
Programming-wise, we encompass a lot of different areas. The entire system is built on a cross platform build system that was designed specifically for this project. As such, its complexity can throw off people who are used to simple makefiles. It's the current project we are dealing with right now, trying to get the source to build on our newly appointed build servers.
As far as code, the majority of LinuxMCE is written in C++, with various glue scripts written in Perl, and BASH, the web admin is written in php.
We need help in the following areas:
* Build system, learning it, understanding it, maintaining it, getting it to work consistently
* Programming Documentation, refining the in-code documentation for the Doxygen generated programming documentation
* Building Device Drivers
* Media
* Lighting
* Climate
* Security
* Telecom
* Building new house-wide functionality (plug-ins and other router local logic)
* Security auditing (we need a metric tonne of this done.)
* debugging the various trac tickets, and mantis tickets from the older system
* People who will deal with windows platform specifics, building the software, etc, maintaining it as new versions of windows arise.
* People who will deal with Symbian platform specifics, porting PlutoMO to new versions of Symbian etc.
* J2ME hackers who can maintain and extend JavaMO to be as complete as the PlutoMO.
* People who can test audio/video hardware, and make device templates for them.
* UI specialists who have no problem dealing with unusual design paradigms and tools.
and a lot more....
As I said, the best way is to find a spot and jump in. You do not need permission from us. This is a community project.
The Wiki Programmer's Guide is the best place to start.. it is a bit thin, but it should give you a good overview of the system.
As far as anything else. It will probably take you some time to fully understand the mechanics of the system. We are here to help (but not hand-hold), and we wish you good luck.
-Thom
