Slack, Gitter, or similar for XLights Development

[gerryh]

Hey guys. I'd like to start contributing code to XLights. I was wondering if there was a development-centric chat room for this project. I didn't even see a development sub forum, so I'm not even sure if this is the right place to ask.

Thanks in advance!

[keithsw1111]

There isn't. There is an email group but to be honest mostly we just email each other.

[Gilrock]

What kind of functionality or changes are you interested in adding?

[gerryh]

What kind of functionality or changes are you interested in adding?

I'm not sure yet, but I just got into this hobby and I have a former background in digital image and signal processing. A lot of that knowledge transfers fairly well to this kind of stuff.

I'd probably start with bug fixes until I get acquainted with the code base. I'd like to eventually look into improving the rendering pipeline with GPU acceleration (OpenCL or similar). There are also some other things I'd like to do, like color space transforms and maybe some usability enhancements. I also have a background in music, so maybe I can put the two together.

I'm just kinda interested in general as a hobby project. I don't have any specific goals. My real job is pretty time consuming already. Haha!

[keithsw1111]

All interesting skills. Helping with the coding can be rewarding. It is a daunting code base when you first start out. I would suggest you start with simple effect enhancements and the like and branch out from there. Also remember this is a Multiplatform project so we have to be careful to ensure everything runs on 3 different operating systems.

[arw01]

Something small that would be nice would be the ability to make the controller name space bigger on the grid, you cannot see longer names and it won't scroll or resize. 

I felt pretty good getting wx and the codebase going last year so I could at least compile the latest version.

[Gilrock]

Something small that would be nice would be the ability to make the controller name space bigger on the grid, you cannot see longer names and it won't scroll or resize. 

I felt pretty good getting wx and the codebase going last year so I could at least compile the latest version.

I tried to fix that once and failed after a few hours of being angry at the PC.

[keithsw1111]

Don't make it bigger. Make it resizable but as Gil says it may not be easy. Wxwidgets is hard to learn.

[gerryh]

Don't make it bigger. Make it resizable but as Gil says it may not be easy. Wxwidgets is hard to learn.

I still haven't poked around in the code yet. Super busy - I plan on starting in January. But how decoupled is the rest of the logic/application/engine from wxWidgets? If it can be decoupled, that can open some doors. Electron comes to mind - it's what powers Atom and Visual Studio Code, both of which are also multi platform. Just spitting out random thoughts here.

I use XLights, so I'm going to find SOMETHING to do.

[keithsw1111]

Wxwidgets is fundamental. It isolates every aspect of the code from platform specifics. While we can add libraries they have to be worth the weight they add.

[dkulp]

At one point, I did start going through and reducing the wxWidgets dependency by doing simple things like wxString -> std::string and using the std containers and such so that more things are independent.   Much of the effect rendering now is wxWidgets free other than image, text, and tendrils.   Almost everything else is completely dependent on wxWidgets.   We use the XML parsing from wxWidgets.  All the UI stuff is wxWidgets except the drawing code which is pure OpenGL.   Not only is it wxWidgets dependent, it's very CodeBlocks dependent.   All the dialogs and panels and such are setup and created in CodeBlocks and you would need to use CodeBlocks to edit them.   

If I was starting a project now, I likely wouldn't use wxWidgets.  But there is WAY too much code in xLights to move away from it now.   If we started right now, I doubt we'd be done for next Christmas.