[Geany-Users] Getting familiar with the code

[Matthew Brush]

On 12-10-18 12:18 PM, John McCrary wrote:
> I'm wondering on how I could familiarize myself with the code more when
> poking around in Geany.
> I think a good idea is to have a link on the "Developer" page that
> describes some common functions

The HACKING file is a good read, and Geany's plugin API documentation, 
as well as the API references for the libraries in the GTK+ stack (GTK+, 
GLib, GObject, etc). Also Scintilla documentation is extremely useful 
for when you need to change something related to the editor widget.

> that are used in the source code of geany. If not then could anybody
> help me in finding small tasks
> that I could help out with?
>

What do you know now? Are you a C programmer? If not, what language(s) 
do you know? Do you know the GTK+ stack at all? This kind of info is 
helpful in order to offer better suggestions.

Generally though, just find an annoying bug/misfeature/missing feature 
and spend some time figuring out where the offending code is and how it 
(doesn't) work, and then figure out how to make it work.

Another good way is to write a plugin, because it will familiarize you 
with Geany's plugin API (which is a pretty big portion of the important 
functions in Geany's source) and you can read other plugins' source and 
Geany's to see why and how stuff is the way it is. I'd go the plugin 
route first if you don't currently know C/GTK+ at all yet since it's a 
little more gentle than landing face first into a 5000 line Geany source 
file :)

You should probably also subscribe to Geany's development mailing list 
and there's usually a few Geany and/or plugin developers hanging in the 
IRC channel, depending on your timezone.

Cheers,
Matthew Brush