User:Mm Alder/SLDev Open Source Viewer

What is the SLDev Open Source Viewer?

According to the announcement from Linden Lab

"Our hope is that we can create a widely-used openly developed version of the Second Life client which is a compelling alternative for a broad set of users, and contains enhancements and development that then rapidly make their way back into the mainstream Second Life version."

Translated, that means it's how you, the open source developer, get your code into the Second Life viewer.

Second Life is Open Source!

In January, 2007 Linden opened the source for the Second Life viewer and many residents began to contribute code to improve or otherwise extend the functionality, reliability, and openness of the viewer. But the code wasn't really open for mutual development between Lindens and residents. Residents got to see the source, and they could create patches to be applied to it, but they needed a Linden to actually apply that patch to the code used to build the Linden public viewer.

In addition there were two systems for reporting bugs, fixes, and features: the public JIRA (PJIRA) and the internal Linden JIRA (just JIRA). Residents read the former and Lindens read the latter. Every now and then a Linden will comment on the PJIRA, but if you add them all up, you'd think Linden was operating out of someone's garage. There was talk of merging the two, but that never happened.

At the same time, there was a clamor from residents to fix the bugs before adding new features that nobody wanted. Like WindLight.

The result was an ever increasing difficulty for open source developers to get code accepted into the published viewer.

The Nicolaz viewer, The Dale Glass viewer, Kirsten's viewer, Imprudence, and more

Eventually, developers became impatient, and decided to publish their own versions of the viewer under the open source license granted by Linden Lab. The result was that residents came to like the alternate viewers more than the official viewer. They were faster, easier to use, had nifty new fietures, and crashed a lot less.

Unfortunately, some of the noble developers who undertook this task, had real lives, and couldn't afford to take the time to figure out and merge in the new features published by Linden every time a new official Linden release came out.

Philip, Benevolent Dictator For Life

But someone at Linden looked around and thought to himself, "If they can do it, why can't we?"

The Open Source Viewer is the brainchild of Philip Linden, the Chairman of the Board at Linden Lab. When Philip decided to give up his role as CEO, he found he had time to do something worthwhile for the company.

Philip realized that developers were becoming discouraged with the difficulty they were having getting their ideas into the official viewer, and if Linden didn't do something, they would lose all interest. So he proposed that Linden follow the trail charted by Nicolaz, Dale Glass, and many others, and have their own Open Source Viewer, but with one decided advantage: he could get the latest Linden changes merged in just by decreeing (oops!) asking. Thus was born the http-texture project! Huh?

http-texture

Philippe Bossut (Merov Linden) had been working on an internal Linden project called http-texture whose goal was to transfer texture assets via HTTP protocol rather than via UDP. Philip decided that Philippe's project would be a good place to start an internal open source project. And so it was.

How do I contribute to it?

Talk to the mailing list

Before you set off coding your great idea for Python versions of the shaders, you better ask around to see if either everyone hates your idea, or Linden is already working on it but hasn't told anyone yet, or someone else has already started a similar project and would welcome your help, or you've managed to design a mousetrap that slices bread and is a dessert topping too!

The first thing you could do is to search the public issue tracker, also known as the PJIRA, to see if there's something similar out there. If there's nothing, or if it's just a request, then take it to the masses.

All of that kind of discussion, and much worse, takes place on the SLDev mailing list. Sure there's a lot of arrogant know-it-alls on the list who will quickly belittle your wonderful idea. No, just kidding! Well, except for Mm Alder, but he's harmless. Just go for it! Everybody has to start somewhere. We've been there too. And there's plenty to do. We can use all the help we can get.

Write your code

OK, everyone loves your mousetrap. Where do you start? Well, first, post your idea to the PJIRA so somebody else interested in mousetraps can find out what you intend to do.

Where do I get the source?

Then, you have to figure out which version of the code to use as your base. You get lots of choices: the source for the official viewer, the source for the Release Candidate, the trunk, or the current SLDev project.

If you're fixing a bug, the trunk is probably your best bet because that gets the latest code fixes. If your project might take months to develop, you should go with the source for the official viewer because it's not going to change for a while. It's a pain to have your code changes break when you do an update from the repository. You ca never tell if it's your fault or somebody else's.

The official viewer changes every few months; the Release Candidate source every few weeks; the trunk and SLDev project source changes constantly. The choice is yours. Before you think about submitting it to the SLDev project, though, you will have to make a patch relative to the SLDev source code.

How do I make sense of this mess?

Indra? Oh God! Newview? Compared to what? And H-E double-hockey-sticks everywhere!

Don't despair. The Viewer Architecture is a good place to start. The Viewer source article gives you some hints about the directory structure. And Doxygen will let you breathe a sigh of relief.

Just watch out for the Hippo.

And if you happen to be wandering around dense murky code that has no documentation on the wiki, then Dr. Livingston, it's your duty to write about it on the wiki for the next intrepid explorer.

How do I build it?

Nowadays people are using CMake to make solution files for the Microsoft Visual Studio integrated development environment (IDE) on Microsoft Windows, or to make project files for XCode on Mac OS X, or to generate makefiles for gcc on Linux. The build process is still being developed and it's getting easier, but it still takes a bit of perseverence.