Getting Started as a Photran Contributor

New Photran contributors are always welcome. Here are some suggestions for getting started.

1. Check out Photran's source code from CVS and run the test suite. We have written detailed instructions on how to do this.
2. Join the photran-dev mailing list. This is where discussions about Photran's development take place. Questions from developers (like you), release planning, API changes, etc. all get discussed here.
3. Join the photran users' mailing list. It is good to keep track of what Photran's users are discussing, and as a Photran developer you will probably be able to answer many of their questions as well.
4. Create a Bugzilla account. You will need to create an account at bugs.eclipse.org if you don't already have one. When you eventually want to contribute code to Photran, you will need to do it by attaching a patch to a Bugzilla bug.
5. Read the Photran Developer's Guide. Chapters 1, 2, and 3 apply to everyone. The other chapters are more specialized; for example, the chapters on Parsing and Refactoring only apply to people developing refactorings, and the Photran Editors chapter applies mostly to people adding features to the Fortran editor.
6. Get a book or two on Eclipse plug-in development. Eventually, you'll want to buy (or check out from the library) a book on Eclipse plug-in development. I like The Java Developer's Guide to Eclipse by D'Anjou et al., but there are other good ones as well. If you get D'Anjou's book, you only need to read Chapters 7-9 and possibly 21 to get started. After you figure out the basics of Eclipse development (like how plugin.xml works), it's easiest to just start fixing bugs or adding features, returning to it as a reference when you have something more specific you need to do.

Photran's web site is http://www.eclipse.org/photran. All of the above resources are listed on the "Contributor Info" page.