[FFmpeg-devel] Contributing to the project?

[George Boyle]

Great! Thank you both (Carl and Michael) for the suggestions. I'll begin
by having a look at the coverity one and see how I get on.

Best wishes,
George


On 10/06/15 17:03, Michael Niedermayer wrote:
> On Wed, Jun 10, 2015 at 04:26:49PM +0100, George Boyle wrote:
>> Hello,
>>
>> I was wondering what is the best way to begin getting involved in
>> contributing to ffmpeg/libav*? I've been a big fan of the project for
>> years. I've been an observer on the mailing list, and have closely read
>> the guidelines on the website, so I have a fair idea of how the
>> development/review process works.
>>
>> I am a software developer with 5 years experience, mostly in Java
>> (specifically web services, REST APIs among other things), but I do have
>> a reasonable knowledge of C as well. I have an interest in audio/video
>> codecs and formats, but little expertise and no experience in that area.
>> However, I am eager to work hard and learn quickly, with minimal
>> disruption, on any task that might be suitable.
>>
>> I don't want to be a burden on people's time, as I know everyone is busy
>> and that you already engage in training and mentoring programs, but if
>> there were some low priority tasks or tests to be written that would
>> help me get my feet wet, I'd be very grateful to be pointed in that
>> direction. Alternatively, if there are other channels I should engage
>> with first, or upskilling I should do prior to contributing (e.g. a
>> particular area of the code to study), advice to that effect would be
>> very much appreciated too.
> 
> contributions in all areas are welcome!
> if you want some random suggestion then for example
> the file we use for testing FFmpeg with coverity should be extended
> as coverity fails to find some memleaks
> please see tools/coverity.c in FFmpeg git for the current file
> 
> the format of the file is documented at
> https://scan.coverity.com/models
> 
> the file likely can also be extended in other ways to allow coverity
> to find more issues.
> But the memleak case is known as vittorio from libav told me that he
> wrote such a modelling file to find the memleaks he fixed recently.
> The libav coverity modeling file is non public though and yes i asked
> vittorio to share it a while ago already.
> 
> Another area to work on would be to fix some tickets from
> https://trac.ffmpeg.org
> or implement feature requests
> or to help review patches on the mailing list if you see something
> that crosses an area you know (there are occasionally patches that
> require expert knowledge outside multimedia as well ...)
> 
> But in the end, what i would suggest is, work on what is fun to you!
> 
> [...]
> 
> 
> 
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