Subversion is a configuration management tool used by many software projects. It is a client / server application which allows users to check-out and update (depending on privileges) the central repository. There are lots of articles on SVN on the web. For the gory details see:  http://svnbook.red-bean.com/

Most of our development team uses Tortoise available from  http://tortoisesvn.tigris.org/ which integrates into your Windows Desktop. There are also command line clients such as  sliksvn.

Getting the Source Code

There are two ways to view the software. You can simply browse the code on the web or you can get a SVN client and download one or more files. To browse the tree, simply click on Browse Source in the toolbar at the top of this page. If you want to build the full project from scratch you would want to use a client to get the full tree, Install the client software and then point the client to http://www.falconview.org/svn/FalconView.

For example using a command line SVN client type like  sliksvn enter

svn co http://www.falconview.org/svn/FalconView/trunk/public

on the command line to get the latest version of our repository or

svn co http://www.falconview.org/svn/FalconView/branches/4.2.1/public

to get the 4.2.1 version which is more stable.

Before you attempt to build please read the Build Notes.txt file in the "public" directory.

Creating a Patch

If you decide to get your hands dirty and start modifying FalconView source (as opposed to creating a new plug-in) and you would like to donate your change back into the codebase for inclusion with future versions of FalconView, you will need to follow our process for submitting a patch.

1. Open a trac Ticket detailing the deficiency or enhancement along with your proposed solution.
2. Indicate in the ticket that you intend to work on the solution so we can be sure that we are not conflicting with other changes in the same area.
3. Check out the latest code from SVN
4. Make your changes
5. Create a test procedure to verify your change. Either a step by step list of how you intend to test or a test program that will exercise your change programmatically. (See also our vairous test applets at http://www.falconview.org/trac/FalconView/browser/FalconView/trunk/Test)
6. Once you are satisfied with your change, use SVN to create a patch or diff file that defines the differenced between the latest version of code in the trunk and the your code.
7. Attach the patch to the ticket. The person responsible for that area of code will review your patch and assuming it appears to be correct, will apply the patch to the trunk.