Contributors' Guide to BRL-CAD

What Code to Work On

If you would like to fix a bug or work on a major project, then this section is for you. Depending on how long you want to be with us, we have tasks that will take you anywhere from a few hours to a few days to several months to complete. Regardless of your level of participation, make sure you read the How to Contribute section for information about BRL-CAD's developer guidelines.

Two-Hour Tasks

These tasks have roughly the same complexity and require no prior experience with BRL-CAD experience to complete. They're a great starting point for anyone interested in getting involved in the development process of BRL-CAD, as they can be completed in just a couple of hours.

Check out our list of available mini tasks that we call deuces and quickies. Each task has a labelled level of difficulty: easy, medium, and hard. Although the hard ones are math intense, don't let them scare you away.

Two-Week Tasks

If you have few hours to spare each day, check our TODO list (http://brlcad.org/xref/source/TODO). These tasks can help potential developers do modifications and submit patches to gain commit access to our code repository. You should be able to complete the tasks on this list within 14 days. Before starting on a task, however, you should discuss it with other developers on our mailing list.

We also have a BUGS file, included in each binary and source distribution, which lists the application bugs that developers are invited to fix. If you plan to tackle a bug, remember to report it in our bug tracker.  

Students participating in Google Code-in can view tasks on the BRL-CAD website (http://brlcad.org/wiki/GCI_Tasks). Each task is described in a little detail, and students are directed to relevant BRL-CAD source code or websites to help them complete these tasks. 

Two-Month Tasks

If you want to become more deeply involved in the BRL-CAD project, then you should take the time to check our ideas page (http://brlcad.org/~sean/ideas.html). Students who are participating in Google Summer Of Code should explore our projects page (http://brlcad.org/~sean/ideas.html) and the ideas page to get a feel for the tasks that are available. These tasks should take about 60 days to complete.