VirtueMart

h1. A note to new Developers

Once you have been included in the development team you can then select an open task/bug/whatever from our developer portal. When you have selected something you would like to work on you will need to assign yourself to that item. If you do not have access yet one of the development leaders can do that for you.

Once you have code that is ready to commit to SVN please contact one of the development leaders. We will evaluate your code and commit it.  After this you will be granted commit rights to the SVN directly. I am sure all of you can understand the need for us to have a look at your first commit offer.

Guides how to start:

* Please start with the developer guide https://dev.virtuemart.net/cb/wiki/4161.

* After that please read the forum threads marked with [DECISION] so you know what is already discussed.

* Take a look at the tracker http://dev.virtuemart.net/redmine/projects/virtuemart/issues. If you don't have already access to it, please alert Milbo in skype bhangla.

* When you find a task the suits to you, just write a message and you may start with it at once.

Rick wrote a system so that we can rewrite VirtueMart to MVC step by step or better said by view. Please read this to enable your new written view.

There are 2 columns in the vm_admin_menu table; a view column and a task column. Just add the view name to this table and the admin menu will create the link using that view name.  It is coded the admin menu helper in such a way so that if the view name and/or task is present in the table it will create the link based on that. If it is not present it will create the link in the manner it was done in VirtueMart.

So as you complete moving sections of code to MVC, make the necessary changes to the vm_admin_menu table to use the new view.

Remember to update the sql files in install and migration.

An important goal is to go Joomla native. So try to use the Joomla native methods as best as possible. Use j! debugger, language, db and so on.

You can find a best practices guide using the following link:

http://dev.virtuemart.net/redmine/projects/virtuemart/wiki/Best_practices

This will help us develop pages that work and act consistantly.

Some thoughts:

- If you have an idea or special interest for VirtueMart, write it in the internal forums where we can discuss it and develop a plan. However, if you start developing something then finish it. Too often developers are very enthuastic and start a great, big, mega feature and end up with nothing useable. Discussion and planning in the forum should make possible to work together

- If you want to committ a new version, first do an update via SVN of it, then test it again and after that committ it. Some minor bugs will happen but ensure that the system itself is workable. Within the alpha phase of each release you do not need to spend too much time debugging echoes or things like this. Some examples: It might happen that someone is developing a great new view for the administration backend and committs a code that leads to a buggy panel that is impossible to use. Every developer of the team has then problems to develop further. Or if you change a database field to the new standards than it is important to find it everywhere as best as possible. In other case other devs get crazy by mysterious bugs.

- Mistakes might happen, important is to learn from them

- It is better to do something wrong than to do nothing