[packagekit] Introduction

[Richard Hughes]

On Wed, 2007-12-05 at 16:09 -0500, Juan Camilo Prada wrote: 
> > * Lots of the functions are not well commented with gtk-doc. Most
> > important is to get the libpackagekit/*.c annotated as it's used in
> > other projects. This is probably quite a boring job but is a good way to
> > work out how PackageKit is put together.
> 
> Ok, so i think ill stick to that one and start commenting those
> functions. Maybe, as you say, its a boring task but im pretty sure i can
> understand a bit more about PackageKit so i can start coding later...
> and pheraps when i get more used to i'll try to do something more
> exciting 

Yes, this is the best way. You'll probably find some bugs when writing
the comments, for instance a _return_value_as_string function returning
an int not a string :-)

> This would be my first time doing this kind of job so, what should i
> download?, or what tools are required? how to start commenting? what are
> the guidelines? :) 

Well, basically you'll need an up to date linux distro, I would
recommend either Fedora 8 or Foresight Linux, although it's really what
you are most comfortable using.

Then, to get the code you'll need to read:
http://packagekit.org/pk-download.html and do:

git clone git://anongit.freedesktop.org/git/packagekit

Then you can start reading the .c files in libpackgekit and try to
understand what they do. You can read the HACKING file in the packagekit
directory for help on how to comment and that sort of thing. If anything
doesn't make sense, just fire off a mail to this list, or grab one of us
in IRC. My nickname is hughsie, although today I have to do unpacking
and ironing and other boring life stuff like that :-)

I hope that helps,

Richard.