[Soc-2007-dev] Anyone else a bit overwhelmed?

[Martin Poirier]

Hi Aaron and others too,

--- Aaron Moore <two.a.ron at gmail.com> wrote:

> I know what I need to do in theory, I just can wrap
> my mind around the
> existing source code. I've searched it with grep,
> browsed definitions with
> ctags, followed the execution of the render system
> and examined the memory
> layout with insight (gdb) and I'm still not really
> getting it.

If you haven't already, you should have a good look at
the Blender Architecture documents:
http://www.blender.org/development/architecture/

Some of it is a bit outdated, but the view and
insights it gives on the underlying architecture, the
source layout and "how stuff works" basically is
great.

One simple thing to check is the structure definitions
in source/blender/makesdna/DNA_*.h which represents
all the data that is saved to a blend file.

> I can only imagine that all beginners have a hard
> time starting.

The trick is to focus on one part of the code. If
you're going to work on the render engine (or its
api), look at that and that only. For someone working
on the toolset, one of the usual way to do it is to
start from a hotkey you know, find it around in
src/space.c and trace what it does from there.

> Also, I've not gotten any other emails except the
> one from Chris, so I don't
> really have a good concept of what it's for. Do I
> just mail all summer of
> code related emails to the list?

SOC related should be here, yes. If it is more of a
blender devs related emails (if you want to ask for
opinions on a piece of code, questions on what part of
the blender code does and the like), you can ask in
bf-committers (@blender.org) or in #blendercoders
(irc.freenode.net).

Martin


       
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