Contributing

If you’re interested in contributing new code to the TURBU project, here’s what you’ll need to do:

  • First and foremost, you need the Delphi 2009 programming environment and the knowledge and skill to use it.  At the moment, TURBU will not compile under anuything else.  (I’d really like to make it work under Lazarus, but until they get support for packages and frames, it’s just not gonna happen.)
  • Download and build the project.  You can find the source code at http://code.google.com/p/turbu/source.  A SVN client will make managing the code a lot easier.  (I personally use TortoiseSVN, and it works well, but there are others available if Tortoise doesn’t work well for you.)

If you’re interested in joining the team:

  • Find something that can be improved–either a bug to fix, or some feature that’s not complete (or hasn’t even been started)–and improve it.  No refactorings or “code cleanup” for your initial submission, please; only submissions that actually improve the project’s feature set or its performance.  This shouldn’t be difficult to do, with the project still in its infancy.
  • Create a diff patch containing your improvements.  Your SVN client should be able to do this for you with a minimum of effort.
  • Post your patch on the forums.  Create a new thread in the Submissions forum, explaining what your patch improves and add a link to your patch.  If you don’t have any hosting to upload it to, you can post it on a free site such as Pastebin.  I’m going to upgrade the forum soon to allow attachments directly, but at the moment there’s no support for that here.
  • When your initial submission gets accepted, I’ll contact you via PM with details on how to get yourself added to the TURBU project on Google Code, so you’ll have direct access to the SVN repository.  I’ll also upgrade your forum account, so you’ll be able to get into the project members’ private section.  This is where we coordinate development work and make sure everyone’s on the same page.

If you just want to contribute a small fix or new feature, but don’t want to actually join the team, the process is pretty much the same.  Just create a patch and post a thread about it, as explained above, but in your post, please note that this is just a code submission and not an application to join the project.

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