• BLOG
  • USER ACCOUNT

Open Technology Solutions

  • home
  • about us
  • contact
  • portfolio
  • services
Home › Blogs › Joshua Hesketh's blog

Diving into GNOME Development

Submitted by Joshua Hesketh on Thu, 24/01/2008 - 23:32.

I have just finished writing: A brief overview of how to get started developing and contributing to GNOME with the GNOME Developer Kit.

Wanting to change and/or contribute to open source software is one thing, but diving into development can be a very daunting and challenging process. Every software project has their own repository of code, their own programming methodologies and their own development environment and tools and as such it can be hard to know where to start.

My favourite open source project would have to be the GNOME Project. Within the desktop environment there are numerous applications designed to achieve certain tasks and functionality. Until recently it has been somewhat a chore for somebody to easily set up a development environment in which they can play around with the latest and greatest development (unstable) version of GNOME. Thankfully the GNOME Developer Kit came along. This is simply a Linux distribution with the latest GNOME applications, libraries and builds from the GNOME SVN. This purpose-packaged Linux distribution is a great way to not only trial the new developments and progress made within GNOME, and even Linux, but to also contribute back to the GNOME project.

Since the developer kit has the latest libraries and tools required for GNOME development it is very easy to download and compile the source of any GNOME module. Thanks to the help and brillient guidance of Ken Vandine I have written a document/tutorial on how to utilise Foresight Linux's[1] brillient package manager, Conary (developed by rPath). You can find the tutorial here which will walk you through the process of downloading, building, modifying, patching, creating patches and contributing to the GNOME module of your choice from start to end.[2]

I'm hoping that this guide will be a great way for software developers to quickly and easily jump into GNOME development, and not only them, but also testers and translators. The developer kit really is a great way to generate clean patches and test the mainstream GNOME project without going through the dependency nightmare to build the application.

Recommended Links:

  • http://www.gnome.org
  • http://live.gnome.org/GnomeLove
  • http://live.gnome.org/GnomeDeveloperKit
  • http://live.gnome.org/GnomeDeveloperKit/BuildingPackages

1.
Foresight Linux is the parent distribution of the GNOME Developer Kit. That is, the GNOME Developer Kit is based off Foresight Linux.
2.
If you are unsure of the terminology used in this sentance, then the chances are that the tutorial isn't for you. However if you are interested, take a look at it for more information
  • Development
  • Documentation
  • Gnome
  • Linux
  • Joshua Hesketh's blog

PHP is commonly used as the

Submitted by projecten (not verified) on Tue, 13/05/2008 - 01:11.

PHP is commonly used as the P in this bundle alongside Linux, Apache and MySQL, although the P can also refer to Python or Perl.

  • reply

This step involves

Submitted by california home security systems (not verified) on Tue, 13/05/2008 - 01:33.

This step involves documenting the methodology or philosophy of how to design alarms. It can include things such as what to alarm, standards for alarm annunciation and text messages, how the operator will interact with the alarms, etc.

  • reply

In the United States tower

Submitted by cartiere rezidentiale (not verified) on Fri, 16/05/2008 - 21:09.

In the United States tower blocks are commonly referred to as midrise or highrise apartment buildings, depending on their height, while buildings that house fewer flats (apartments), or are not as tall as the tower blocks, are called lowrise apartment buildings.

  • reply

Post new comment

The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.
  • Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.
  • Allowed HTML tags: <sup> <div> <a> <em> <strong> <cite> <code> <ul> <ol> <li> <dl> <dt> <dd>
  • Lines and paragraphs break automatically.
  • Use <fn>...</fn> to insert automatically numbered footnotes.
  • You can enable syntax highlighting of source code with the following tags: <code>, <blockcode>. Beside the tag style "<foo>" it is also possible to use "[foo]".

More information about formatting options

CAPTCHA
This question is for testing whether you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions. (Lowercase alphabetical characters only).
Image CAPTCHA
Copy the characters (respecting upper/lower case) from the image.

Latest News

  • University Exams on Computers
  • Open Technology Solutions Launched!
[more]

Featured Blog Posts

  • Linux.conf.au 2008 - One week on
  • The advantages of choosing Linux
  • Diving into GNOME Development
  • What can Linux do for the Average Joe?
  • Why is open source important to technology and the world?
[visit company blog]

Search

  • home
  • about us
  • contact
  • portfolio
  • services

©2008 Open Technology Solutions.