wiki:Development/GettingStarted

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Version 9 (modified by Robert Peters, 11 years ago) (diff)
Added info about running distribution version of Monodevelop under Kubuntu 9.04

Getting Started

The following instructions should help you get started with the WarFoundry source code so that you can explore it and start working with it.

Required Tools

There are only really two main tools needed for developing WarFoundry, an SVN client and a development environment. As WarFoundry is built using C# 2.0 you'll also need a .Net 2.0 compatible framework such as Mono (which may already be installed on some Linux distros) or Microsoft's .Net framework (which may already be installed on some versions of Windows).

Development Environment

All of the WarFoundry projects use Visual Studio 2005 project files, as 2005 includes useful features like Generics without the huge framework download and lack of open-source support.

For System.Windows.Forms development (Windows-based applications), using Visual Studio 2005 is recommended. Microsoft make versions of Visual Studio 2005 Express available for free. Although they're not as feature complete as the full version and don't (officially) support plugins, they seem more than adequate for the current WarFoundry work.

For GTK# and other non-System.Windows.Forms development, using MonoDevelop is recommended. MonoDevelop isn't as powerful as Eclipse for Java development, but it does have a plugin architecture (including SVN support) and a GTK GUI editor.

Other development environments may also be suitable, depending on taste, (e.g. Eclipse with a Mono/.Net plugin, or SharpDevelop) but Visual Studio Express 2005 and MonoDevelop have been adequate and useful for all current development.

SVN Client

The easiest way to work with SVN is when source control is integrated in to your development environment. Unfortunately, Subversion plugins for Visual Studio normally come with a price tag and aren't compatible with Visual Studio Express (which leaves you with an even bigger price tag on Visual Studio).

SVN in MonoDevelop

If you are using MonoDevelop then integrated subversion is already built-in through the supplied plugins. If the plugin is disabled then check that the Subversion client executable is installed on your computer. MonoDevelop will write a warning to the console if the plugin is enabled but it can't find the subversion executable, but not warn you through the GUI. Once MonoDevelop can see the subversion executable you should have a "Checkout" menu item under the "File" menu. Note: Under versions of Ubuntu, you will also need to install the monodevelop-versioncontrol package before you will even have the option to Checkout under the file menus.

SVN in Visual Studio

There are several SVN plugins for Visual Studio, but all of the ones I've seen have a price tag and aren't compatible with Visual Studio Express editions. This is part of Microsoft's general tactic of getting people used to core functionality and then get the money when they want advanced functionality. The easiest solution (if you don't already have a full copy of Visual Studio) is to use an external SVN client.

External SVN clients

If your development environment doesn't include SVN integration then the easiest alternative is an external client. There are lots of clients for all OSes. The most popular client for Windows seems to be TortoiseSVN, while most Linux developers tend to have development environments that include source control as a core feature.

SVN from the command-line

The brave can always use SVN from the command-line. While it does have its uses, it's not generally advised for long-term use. Command-line arguments and usage instructions can be found in the SVN book at Red-bean.com.

Getting the source code

Exact details of how to get the source code will vary by client, but the following are the required projects to work with WarFoundry. You will need to check out all of the required projects for a given GUI from Subversion and add them to a solution to be able to compile and use WarFoundry.

Some projects also have companion "Test" projects. These can be identified by having the same project name, except that ".Tests" is appended. It is recommended that you also download the tests and run them regularly as you make changes to make sure that nothing is broken. Everything should also have unit tests added as/before it is written, although up until now this hasn't been the case.

Note: Each of the following is a link to the 'trunk' directory, which is the current development version. If you want to check out a branch (a separate fork of development for a different feature) or a tag (a marker that shows a specific version) then you will need to replace 'trunk' with the appropriate path. There are currently no branches or tags.

WarFoundry API

Project name	Subversion location	Description
IBBoard	svn://svn.ibboard.co.uk/ibboard/IBBoard/trunk	Core IBBoard utils
IBBoard.WarFoundry.API	svn://svn.ibboard.co.uk/warfoundry/IBBoard.WarFoundry.API/trunk	Core API for WarFoundry

WarFoundry GTK#

WarFoundry API projects, plus:

Project name	Subversion location	Description
IBBoard.Log4Net	svn://svn.ibboard.co.uk/ibboard/IBBoard.Log4Net/trunk	Logging support (for use with the LogNotifier in the IBBoard core utils)
IBBoard.WarFoundry.GUI.GTK	svn://svn.ibboard.co.uk/warfoundry/IBBoard.WarFoundry.GUI.GTK/trunk	GTK# interface for WarFoundry
IBBoard.Ini	svn://svn.ibboard.co.uk/ibboard/IBBoard.Ini/trunk	INI file parsing
IBBoard.WarFoundry.Plugin.Rollcall	svn://svn.ibboard.co.uk/warfoundry/IBBoard.WarFoundry.Plugin.Rollcall/trunk	Rollcall ADF file support

The last two projects will eventually be removed as requirements. Currently they are requires as the Rollcall plugin is hard-coded in to the GTK# app for testing.

WarFoundry S.W.F