How to best get involved ?

Altimes · Post by **Altimes** » Thu Jul 12, 2018 11:21

I'd like to look at possibly becoming involved.

Just to convince myself that I might be able to, I think that I have managed to successfully run a build from the the GIT zip source download.

So far, I have managed to create an Ubuntu 16.04 VM on Win10, followed the guidelines for installing the SDK and pulled the zip of the source down.

With a couple of hiccups along the way, the make for a T4 appears to have completed successfully. Presuming that seeing an 12 MB enigma2 and
corresponding "glue" enigma.py file is a measure of success.

What methods of testing do people use (and keep household peace?) . FTP the two files onto the box and reboot ?

Any guidance appreciated.

Alan.

prl · Post by **prl** » Thu Jul 12, 2018 12:29

Altimes wrote: ↑
Thu Jul 12, 2018 11:21
...
What methods of testing do people use (and keep household peace?) . FTP the two files onto the box and reboot ?

Backup the original files (enigma2.pyo in the case of a new enigma.py), scp (though FTP will be fine) the two files to the box and restart the GUI. I have the luxury of test machines, so no-one minds when I write code that crashes things. I'll often run alphas of more complicated changes on our in-use T4, though, but only after I'm reasonably sure that they won't interfere with things. Then afterwards, delete the modified files and rename the originals from their backups and restart the GUI.

It's possible to do quite a lot of software work on Enigma2 without building the binary. All the python code other than the generated files like enigma2.py can just be modified and copied to the PVR and run (after backing up the originals). Similarly for a lot of the data files: skin definitions, image files, data files like setup.xml and keymap.xml, etc, etc.

The Python code is initialised and started up from mytest.py. That's also where the Session class (which handles Screen instantiation) is to be found, and the low-level actions that are taken at startup and shutdown.

Always remove modifications before doing an online firmware update.

Altimes wrote: ↑
Thu Jul 12, 2018 11:21
Just to convince myself that I might be able to, I think that I have managed to successfully run a build from the the GIT zip source download.

If you want to contribute to the firmware releases, you'll need to work on a fork & clone of the repository, rather than from the ZIP download.

What are you interested in working on?

IanSav · Post by **IanSav** » Thu Jul 12, 2018 12:35

Hi Alan,

As Prl mentioned, you don't really need to work at the "C" layer for productive development. Most of my efforts are all focused at the Python code layer.

Regards,
Ian.