Getting involved in development (1 Viewer)

[i2o]

Hey guys,

After years of fighting Windows Media Center I'm looking for something new. I've been poking around at SageTV and a few other solutions. As a techie I'm keen to jump into something I can contribute towards and I stumbled across Media Portal. I dropped 1.0 RC4 onto my HTPC and immediately a few ideas came to mind as to how to spice it up a bit. Grabbing the trunk I scanned through the code and see some opportunities to jump in and contribute. I've read the coding guidelines, looked at the issue / bug backlog, and poked around at the v2 work going on. At this point I'm ready to roll up my sleeves and get involved, throw some ideas around, and write some code. I've got a few questions:

1. For version 2, it looks like there is a shift in architecture. Is there an overview of some of the design goals for v2?
2. What is the development process if I were to get into the v2 tree? (i.e. I commit to the sourceforge trunk, who approves, do we do patches instead of full commits, etc...)

Thanks!
Colin

 

[Spragleknas]

Hi, and welcome to the forum, i2o

First:
- MP1.0 is (very)soon to be released (before xmas). Lately only bugfixing has been done (feature freeze).
- You could have a look at Roadmap - MediaPortal Bugtracker to find what will happen to MP1 after the big release.

To your questions:
- I believe* MP2 has been heavily rewritten since the tech demo. There is not much public documentation for MP2 I'm afraid. You'll find some info here -> Home - MediaPortal Manual Documentation
- I'll ask a dev to answer*

(*I'm not a dev )

 

[Albert]

Hi i2o,
like Spragleknas said, MP-II has been heavily rewritten this year.
There is documentation available in the wiki section Spragleknas wrote: -> Home - MediaPortal Manual Documentation, you can navigate there to the MediaPortal-II section. Most of the docs are almost up-to-date or at least marked as "obsolete". There is currently much activity in some parts of the system, so the docs might not be completely up-to-date in some areas.

About your questions:
1) I started a document about the requirements here, but it is still only a very small starting point. The DevelopersSystemDocumentation, which is the central MP-II development page, contains a section "Architecture". Here are useful links about some design aspects. Else - you can also ask me.

2) There is no established development process for external coders yet. The idea is that the core system will be written by us core devs. The system is very modular and there are many many interfaces where you can add or modify functionality by adding plugins to MP-II. If you find code parts where you think they need to be fixed or rewritten, you can contact one of the core devs, at the moment you should talk to me. When the core system has stabilized, I guess we'll establish a "real" development process.

Regards,
Daniel

 

[tourettes]

Hi i2o,

few short questions to help you and the team:

1) Can you tell us a little bit of your programming background? Any special skills like DirectX, DirectShow, databases, networking...

2) What kind of interests do you have? I.e. is there some spesific domains that you would like start working on?

As MP1 is mainly maintenance (not that much new features etc. will happen after 1.0 release) I would assume that you would like to work with MPII.

 

[fforde]

For what it's worth, i20, you may also want to consider contributing to one of the plug-in projects. Both the TV-Series plug-in and Moving Pictures are pretty open to contributions by external developers. If those are components you find yourself excited about, maybe you should take a look?

 

[tourettes]

For what it's worth, i20, you may also want to consider contributing to one of the plug-in projects. Both the TV-Series plug-in and Moving Pictures are pretty open to contributions by external developers. If those are components you find yourself excited about, maybe you should take a look?

Indeed. MediaPortal benefits always when someone works with a good plugin. Althou MPII might still need more urgent the man power

 

[i2o]

1) Can you tell us a little bit of your programming background? Any special skills like DirectX, DirectShow, databases, networking...

My experience revolves around the back-end bits of systems - databases, networking, build automation, structural design patterns, performance, etc...

2) What kind of interests do you have? I.e. is there some spesific domains that you would like start working on?

I'm mainly interested in the back-end bits given no experience in DirectX. Looking at how to best facilitate a content directory service for the various static and streaming media, building transport services to connect up with UPnP AV specs, ensuring proper leveraging of OS hooks and that sort of stuff is of interest. Having installed Media Portal v1 I think we can do some work to streamline the setup experience. There is a lot going on and to get the novice to intermediate user we'd need to dial back the amount of configuration or streamline it.

Cheers,
Colin (i2o)

 

[PJ]

I'm mainly interested in the back-end bits given no experience in DirectX. Looking at how to best facilitate a content directory service for the various static and streaming media, building transport services to connect up with UPnP AV specs, ensuring proper leveraging of OS hooks and that sort of stuff is of interest. Having installed Media Portal v1 I think we can do some work to streamline the setup experience. There is a lot going on and to get the novice to intermediate user we'd need to dial back the amount of configuration or streamline it.

Cheers,
Colin (i2o)

I agree with the setup / configuration being overly complex. One thing I'm looking at (hopefully over the xmas period), is to try and get channel scanning and TV setup working inside MP without having to go through TV Server Config. I like the way that MCE does this and i'm hoping to replicate similar functionality in MP. I'm probably biting off more than I can chew but I'll see how things go. Initially I'll be working on single seat stuff and then see if it will work for a client server setup.

 

[i2o]

I agree with the setup / configuration being overly complex. One thing I'm looking at (hopefully over the xmas period), is to try and get channel scanning and TV setup working inside MP without having to go through TV Server Config. I like the way that MCE does this and i'm hoping to replicate similar functionality in MP. I'm probably biting off more than I can chew but I'll see how things go. Initially I'll be working on single seat stuff and then see if it will work for a client server setup.

The setup aspect might be an area I can help out. Most people leave it as an after thought. But if I look at the installation and configuration of most applications those first 10 minutes could spell a significant drop off in potential users.

 

[Paranoid Delusion]

I agree with the setup / configuration being overly complex. One thing I'm looking at (hopefully over the xmas period), is to try and get channel scanning and TV setup working inside MP without having to go through TV Server Config. I like the way that MCE does this and i'm hoping to replicate similar functionality in MP

Now that's exactly what I was thinking about today, try joining us on IRC, if there is a immediate weakness it relates to keyboard need for setting up TVServer.

Cheers