Oh, a new potential programmer for STK? Nice to hear.
I mostly just lurk around here. But I ask anyway: Do you already have concrete plans for STK (i.e. concrete features you want to add, etc.). I am just curious.
Git is a version control system. You should definitely read this:
http://www.git-scm.com/docLearning Git is totally worth it, many free software projects use Git.
And GitHub is one place for Git repositories (not the only one!) and STK hosts its code on GitHub at the moment.
Here’s STK’s project page:
https://github.com/supertuxkart/stk-codeI don’t know how the workflow in STK is done, but what I know from a few other GitHub-hosted projects, roughly spoken it probably breaks down to this (You can only understand this if you understand Git already):
- Fork the official repository on GitHub (using the web interface). This new repo is now yours.
- Clone your repository to your computer, using Git itself.
- Create a branch and do your changes and commits on your branch for your new feature. Such a branch is also commonly called a “feature branch”
- When done, push your changes back to your repository
- Using GitHub’s web interface again, search for your branch create a so-called pull request. This is a request to merge your branch to the official codebase.
- Wait for replies of the other developers and see what happens. You should check the comments section from time to time.
- The outcome is always one of this: Your feature will be merged, a request for bug fixes or other stuff regarding your feature branch is made (and probably will be merged afterwards), your feature is rejected or the pull request gets ignored or forgotten
For the next feature you want to implement, you should create a new branch and so on.
Note, however, that this is
non-official advise here. I don’t know how the actual workflow in STK is like, because it can always differ from project to project.