Development:Contributor Overview

This page will be one of the main pages of the dev-wiki; it will walk a new contributor through the process in an overview fashion, pointing to the detailed information on each part in the separate docs, e.g. building/setting up your dev environment, choosing a bug, coding, getting reviews.

Things in the lists below the text are the pages we should link to

We should also see if there's anything useful on cbo/development/programming, either for this page itself or for the subpages we're going to refer to

Welcome

Welcome to Camino. Interested in becoming a contributor? We're glad to have you on board. This page documents some basic information on how to make the leap from Camino fan to Camino dev, from getting Camino built, to picking out bugs to fix, to getting patches written and checked in. Even if you've contributed to Mozilla-based projects before, you may find this information useful, as much of it is Camino-specific.

Setting up your development environment

Like most complex pieces of software, the Mozilla project requires a flexible build system, which is not always straightforward. Unlike many open-source projects, ./configure; make does not suffice. Similarly, Camino, which embeds the cross-platform Gecko engine in a Cocoa application, depends on a somewhat hybrid build system; in other words, unlike other Cocoa apps, simply opening Xcode and clicking build won't produce a complete Camino application.

While this may seem daunting at first, the system is quite logical and there's very little effort involved in making it work. Gecko is built entirely using UNIX-style makefiles, and the Camino application code can be built either via makefiles or with Xcode once Gecko has been built.

Setting up your development environment entails installing the latest Xcode and appropriate SDKs, installing the three third-party dependencies, setting up your build options, and pulling cvs and building. The following documents will take you through these steps.

• Development:Building
• Development:Building:Intel

  Make sure the final docs have some notes on rebuilding/updating. Most Camino developers only update and rebuild Gecko about once a week (or when Gecko changes also change Camino code) unless they're working on things in embedding or widget.

Choosing a bug

All decisions concerning which bugfixes and features should be implemented in Camino are made in the bugzilla bug-tracking database and on irc.mozilla.org, channel #camino.

• Something that bothers you, something on good first bugs, something that needs to be fixed...

Good First Bug vs. Triage Priority

The "Good First Bugs" list is a list of "bugs" (problems or feature requests) that are good entry points for new Camino developers, not necessarily a list of the bugs that need to be fixed most urgently. A bug's priority is determined (roughly) by the severity field, the priority field (used generally by developers to prioritize lists of bugs assigned to them), the target milestone, and the blocking flags. For instance, bugs with a target milestone of Camino 1.1 are generally most important at the moment, and ones with higher severity (or a camino1.1+ or camino1.1? flag) are the most important of those.

• Bugs Targeted at Camino 1.1
• Somewhere we should have an "Unofficial" Roadmap for Developers with bugs or categories of bugs for a release, like the Firefox PRD but more humane, to supplement the "target milestone" queries--a more-official version of Sam's Roadmap or Smokey's 1.1 list
• Tracking Documents
• Stuff we'd like fixed: Development:Good Bugs and Projects
  • Some members of the team have compiled personal lists of bugs they think need to be fixed, or that people commonly complain about: User:Sardisson/Dogfood, User:Sardisson/Camino_1.1
  • Votes
• QA:Keywords & Status Whiteboard for more info on keywords and the whiteboard

Working on a bug

• When to take a bug, and how to do it (some of this is in the existing cbo dev pages)
• Bugs with status NEW whose assignee is nobody@mozilla.org, mikepinkerton@mac.com, and sfraser_bugs@smfr.org are fair game
• Ask first before taking a bug with status NEW with any other assignee, or before taking a bug with status ASSI.

• Development:Good Bugs and Projects
• Development:Roadmap
• Tracking Documents
• etc

Coding a fix

Text, text, text

• Development:Reviewing (prob needs a new page name)
• Also some of the Tools bits on Development:Home Page (needs either own page or to move here)

Getting Code Review and Checkin

Text, text, text

• Development:Reviewing (other parts of the page, or split the page in 2)

Links and Recommended Reading

• Stuff from the sidebars in cbo/development (below)
• Anything else?

Sections

1. <a href="/development/" accesskey="I">Contributor Introduction</a>
2. <a href="/development/programming/" accesskey="P">Programming</a>
3. <a href="/development/build/" id="current" accesskey="B">Build Instructions</a>
4. <a href="/development/roadmap/" accesskey="R">Roadmap</a>
5. <a href="/development/structure/" accesskey="T">Team Structure</a>

Requirements

• <a href="https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/createaccount.cgi">Register at Bugzilla</a>
• <a href="https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/enter_bug.cgi?format=guided&product=Camino">Report a Camino bug</a>
• <a href="https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/enter_bug.cgi?format=guided&product=Core">Report a Mozilla bug</a>
• <a href="http://www.mozilla.org/quality/bug-writing-guidelines.html">Bug writing guidelines</a>
• <a href="https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/query.cgi">Search for bugs</a>
• <a href="https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/buglist.cgi?product=Camino&bug_status=NEW&bug_status=ASSIGNED&bug_status=REOPENED&changedin=14&chfieldto=Now">Recent active bugs</a>
• <a href="https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/buglist.cgi?product=Camino&bug_status=UNCONFIRMED">Unconfirmed bugs</a>
• <a href="http://www.mozilla.org/hacking/">Mozilla hacking documents</a>
• <a href="http://bonsai.mozilla.org/cvsquery.cgi?treeid=default&module=Camino&branch=&branchtype=match&dir=%2Fmozilla%2Fcamino&file=&filetype=match&who=&whotype=match&hours=2&date=week&mindate=&maxdate=&cvsroot=%2Fcvsroot">Last week's Camino check-ins</a>
• <a href="http://bonsaibugs.org/pyblosxom.cgi/camino">Latest Mozilla tree checkins</a>
• <a href="http://fink.sourceforge.net/index.php">Fink Project</a>
• <a href="http://developer.apple.com/cocoa/">Apple Cocoa</a>

Recommended Reading

• <a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0596004702/">Learn Unix for Mac OS X</a>
• <a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0321213149/qid=1111520306/sr=1-2/ref=sr_1_2/104-8082258-4999151?v=glance&s=books">Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X</a>