Open Source Portal

News December 3, 2006 - We're working on a new homepage for this wiki, at New Main Page. The idea is that multiple projects (volunteers, open source) will share this wiki, and that we'll have portal pages that are the home pages for those various projects.

Project of the Week Protocol - A lot of our security audit is going to be centered around the protocol, so let's make sure we've got this documented as well as we possibly can. Since most of the pages are currently empty, a simple (but very useful) exercise is to hit each of these pages with a top-of-your-head assessment of what files to look at and other hints that a reasonably competent but not specifically SL-knowledgeable programmer could use to document each item. Something as simple as "I think most of what you need is in foobar/blech.cpp, but you might want to check ackbar/bleh.cpp as well".

Getting started

Learn A lot of the documentation below is geared toward developers. However, many aspects of the system don't require a deep technical background to learn. Much of this is still a work in progress, but since this is a wiki, you can help fill in the blanks! Features - An overview of the major components of the system as seen from an end user's perspective. Links to specifications, test plans and other documentation can be found here. Viewer architecture - This is an overview of the viewer from a developer's perspective. Protocol - in depth documentation of the protocol Extended FAQ - For questions that don't get covered in the main open source FAQ. more...

Participate We want your help to make the Second Life Viewer better! You don't need to know C++ or even programming to help. Some of the toughest jobs in software development have nothing to do with writing code. Just grab a test build and try playing around with it. Let us know what you think on email, on the forum, or IRC. If it's not working for you, try to get help there. If it is working for you, try helping someone who isn't having as much luck as you are. If you run into issues, see if a bug report has been filed, and if it isn't file it. If it has been filed, vote for it, perhaps filling in more detail. Of course, if you are a developer, we can use your help. Download the code, and see if you can get it to build. Try your hand at fixing a bug, or extending the software through one of the APIs. There's a ton of ways you can help, and we welcome you regardless of your skill level. more...