Getting Started with Development

Getting the Code

Pioneer is managed using Git, and is stored on Github. The official repository is the best one to get. To get it:

git clone git://github.com/pioneerspacesim/pioneer.git

This will get you on the "master" branch, which is where new code is merged. This is the latest and greatest development. It should be stable.

You may also need to clone the pioneer-thirdparty repository, depending on what platform you're on. It is needed to build on Windows. You should clone this in a directory next to your clone of the pioneer directory (not a sub-directory). Further instructions are in the COMPILING.txt file (linked below).

Coding Conventions

see Coding_Conventions

Compiling

There are instructions for how to compile the code included in the repository:

COMPILING.txt

Also available: Compiling

Debugging

For developers on Linux, gdb can be used for debugging

gdb ./src/pioneer
run

This starts pioneer in gdb. After a crash, you can get a back trace by typing into the gdb prompt "bt". Bugs, and feature requests, should be logged on the issue tracker.

Code editing

Most development is done on GNU/Linux machines, although there are some developers using MS Visual Studio on Windows.

Misc.

How to learn a codebase