RomRaider

Hello,

I downloaded RomRaider SVN/trunk a couple of days ago, got my environment set up, and I am able to compile and run it from source in Eclipse. I started picking over the code and found a few places where I could definitely contribute to the functionality of the program. I haven't done any Java since a 3 week stint in one of my Comp. Sci classes in college years ago, but I do do coding daily (mostly web apps in C#/.net, coldfusion, and PHP) and the source code is not reading like greek to me, but rather like Spanish, where I know enough to find the nearest restroom and order a beer, but not to hold a conversation.

A couple of places I was looking over and thought I could contribute were all in the logger, and include adding layout options for the list of selectable fields (for example, allowing someone to change the separator height for fields/external/switches, as 1px makes it nearly impossible to grab on my touchscreen in the car), adding a preferences menu for masking unused/uneeded fields for display in the list of selectable fields, adding the com port selected for external plugins to the settings.xml file, and taking a crack at making a dyno graph tab in the logger that could export an image or SVG of the dyno run (perhaps using something like jgraph?). For device enumeration in Linux, I was thinking a custom node to search for could be added (i.e. /dev/ECU) and defaulted to if you have symlinks to devices in UDEV rules like I do. Another place I would like to take a crack at is importing GTK look and feel to swing for Linux users.

Maybe I just need to chat with a developer or two to figure out where to get started. I'm not sure where in the code saving and loading values from the XML file are stored, and how this overrides defaults if no settings.xml exists. Anybody want to help a brother get started? Thanks,

-Rich

What we really need first is a set of defined tasks. I've pointed qoncept at some project management software to achieve and drive this. Once we know what needs to be done we can dole out tasks

Help me push for that

here: http://www.redmine.org/


BTW You done good with that look and feel howto, thanks!

Wow...redmine looks similar to another open source project management tool I contributed on called dot project.

Do you guys have RoR hosting for that? I am sure I can figure something out if you don't.

I agree that having goals, creating tasks and milestones for those goals, and assigning resources best suited for each goal is the way to go (project management 101).

Normally, I am called into my project managers' office, given a list of requirements, give my estimate on labor hours for those requirements, the labor hours are inflated for schedule slack and given a 12-15% project management overhead and sent back to the client, the client rejects it and reduces scope. I go through a couple of rounds of this, the client ends up with a reduced scope for their application, my PM creates a schedule, I start working, I report to my PM twice a week for schedule updates and explanations of variance, then eventually I get something to the client that I wish I could have spent more time on and made a better product, but that whole time/money thing gets in the way.

So where do we start

And thanks for the props.

That's a big question. The current developers are generally aware of what each other is doing. Of course, you can contribute in whatever way you wish, but here's what I would consider the current top priorities:

1. Project Management - Setup some kind of portal on which we can post goals and designs. In my job, I don't really care what other people are doing, but distributed, open-source projects thrive on collaboration.
2. Logger - I'm not certain where this is right now, but I hear the LC-1 is integrated and there seems to be a Utec mechansim. Ask Tgui about where you could contribute to the logger stuff.
3. UI - There's a skeleton UI framework that Tgui designed that has been agreed upon as the next UI incarnation. I think the interface is fairly intuitive, the roadblock on this item is simply the sheer amount of work and uncertainty of the lower layers.
4. RamTune / Real-time Tuning - This is my baby (at least the Java portion) -- Merchgod is the domain expert on the low-level ECU behaviors. I sincerely regret how little time I'm able to devote to this task and would jump at the chance to trick, er, I mean, convince another to help me out.

I think the developers on this project agree that #1 is the most important. 2 through 4 are probably equally as important. I originally wanted to accept this task, but quickly discovered after politely asking people to establish a wiki that I would need my own hardware to set one up (can't force anyone to do anything they don't want to do). Truthfully, the manager of this project need only create the wiki and then a few policies on how to maintain it. Here's a couple of processes that address the key project management issues:

1. Stepping on toes / duplicating effort:
   I would ask that people write their username and current task on one page. If I'm working on "RamTune" and you want to help with that, then you look up "RamTune", find me on it, and we chat. After agreeing on a division of labor, we alter the "RamTune" section on that page, reflecting the subsections of that item we're interested in.
2. Design / Interface Collaboration:
   They can elaborate on their design in other pages as necessary. Merchgod and I discussed an XML schema enhancement necessary for RamTune. I would suggest something by posting up a schema and then he would come back and tell me how wrong I was -- hopefully my understanding of the ECU is getting better This ate up quite a few posts and was obviously NOT the place to be revising a design. If I had access to a wiki, I could post a design, and he could simply modify it.

J

Though I'm sure you've seen, jared has a project management suite up and running!

I agree with the above post, but it should be noted that the ramtune functionality will not be visible to end users unless the gui is complete, or at least implemented just for the Ramtune portion.

Time to break out some tasks for my contributions.

Whoops, yea, only just now saw the post. I was kinda curious why I had recieved a "new password" in my email the other day...