Interested in Amarok

[Matěj Laitl]

On 10. 1. 2013 kEsHa sHaH wrote:
> Hi..

Heya,

> I went through the list of Junior jobs and found "Bug 149453 - Artist
> picture in addition to album art" interesting.I read, it is not dependent
> of any other bugs and so I decided to go for it. I think it is feasible and
> want to enter the world of Amarok through this JJ. :)

You might give it a try, but I fear that adding support for these might end up 
being a much bigger task (e.g. requiring database schema update etc.), I'll 
rather remove the junior-job tag.

If you have access to a CD drive, bug 311329 might be an easier start. Or bug 
140198, which has over 200 votes, see my last comment on it.
 
> I have cloned The Amarok Source from git.

Good. Having as much optional dependencies as possible is recommended, so that 
you can catch build errors in unrelated code, important is Google Mock so that 
you can build with KDE4_BUILD_TESTS=ON, then run tests with `make test`. Debug 
build type is also recommended.

> Till now I don't have anything planned for this summer. I would really
> appreciate if given an opportunity to work with this team for Google Summer
> Of Code. :)

Nice, being known even before the program starts is certainly an advantage and 
having contributed would be even better.

> What are the development tools which needs to be installed for getting
> started?

Apart from those mentioned in README and above no other development tools are 
strictly needed. Just some more ideas:
 * Don't hesitate spending a lot of time learning git, it will serve you 
really well in future.
 * Use a C++ -friently IDE that can show you Qt Documentation, Qt Creator or 
recent KDevelop will do well. Use its features: code completion, documentation 
on mouse over, show uses, refactor...
 * Wonder where in code is a GUI element you see in Amarok? Just `git grep -p 
-n "piece of text that shows in GUI"`

> Are there any prerequisites in order to solve that bug?
> What should be my next approach in this direction?

The 2 mentioned bugs should be more straightforward to solve.

> Should I Cc every mail to amarok-devel 's mailing list also?

Generally, you CC everyone who has participated in the discussion incl. all 
mailing lists, so yes. We're an open community, the more things public, the 
better. If your mail client has a "Reply to list" button, use it when 
appropriate.

Also note that many FLOSS communities prefer bottom-posting to top-posting [1] 
on mailing lists. We're kinda relaxed on Amarok mailing lists, but bottom-
posting is newer wrong in Open Source.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posting_style#Top-posting

Cheers,
		Matěj