Re: New come developer need some help!

Hi Xingang,

On Sun, Aug 11, 2013 at 6:15 PM, Xingang Tong <shunjian1128@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi there,
>
> I‘m a freshman who is also a software developer. I learn CS in my college so
> I have a knowledge of C++ and Python. I totally admire the Open Source
> spirit and I really want to contribute to it.

Nice!

> I like LibreOffice and believe that it will be really cool if I can contribute to your codebase.

Great! If you hang in, soon enough you would call it "our codebase". :)

> But here is the problem. Even though I have learned some programming
> languages, I can't find a way to get involved, even faced with EasyHacks. I
> don't know where to begin. I mean I can write a program on my own, but I
> don't know what to do when I'm faced with a bug.
>
> Do I need to read the current codebase first? Or what should I do now?

What I would do is to learn the basic steps on how to contribute and
then gradually move on to more interesting stuff.

Depending on how far you have come already the steps are:

1. Install build dependencies.
2. download the source
3. Build libreoffice
4. Test run
5. Find a file and make a trivial change
6. re-compile
7. Test run.
8. Submit a patch via gerrit.

Step 1. to 3. are covered here:
https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Development/BuildingOnLinux

On Linux they are:

sudo apt-get build-dep libreoffice # only on Debian/Ubuntu
sudo zypper si -d libreoffice # only on OpenSUSE 11.4+
sudo yum-builddep libreoffice # only on Fedora 15+ & derivatives (was
openoffice.org)

git clone git://anongit.freedesktop.org/libreoffice/core libreoffice

cd libreoffice
./autogen.sh
make dev-install

Step 4. and 7. is basically to run ./install/program/soffice.bin

Step 5. Here I would recommend to do a simple replacement of
rtl::OUString -> OUString.
I.e this Easyhack: https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=38838

Use opengork to find a suitable file to edit:
http://http://opengrok.libreoffice.org/

I.e. for instance:
http://opengrok.libreoffice.org/xref/core/sc/source/ui/vba/vbaname.cxx

Step 8. https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Development/gerrit

Don't lose your patience and be sure to ask questions when you get stuck.

Hope it helps. Good luck.

/Albert
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