GAMBAS BOOK 3.19.1

The Gambas project is version managed via SVN - this is where all the official source code is located, such as for the compiler, interpreter or archiver, and for the officially supported and maintained components.

The group of Gambas developers is difficult to name, however, because everyone can participate in the development and everyone decides for themselves when, how intensively and in which specific area they contribute to the Gambas project. In the 'Hall Of Fame' of developers you can see who cares about certain areas. As a developer, you need to create a user account on sourceforge.net. Minisini as the administrator of the Gambas project can grant your sourceforge.net account write access. You have to ask him for this in an email. This Sourceforge account will then be used for all actions with the SVN repository.

In general, the responsibility for additions to the Gambas project lies with the respective authors. Development is entirely casual, with 'development' referring to different areas:

• The programming of the components in C/C++ or Gambas in the narrower sense,
• the language translations of components or the IDE,
• the image processing or
• the maintenance and further development of the software running on gambasdoc.org, or
• distribution-specific configuration and customisation,
• … .

Gambas development is led by Benoit Minisini, who maintains the core programs. He also looks after a large number of the components - his own on the one hand and those no longer maintained by their authors on the other. When developers write classes for Gambas, these classes provide an interface to Gambas through their properties, methods, events and constants. To ensure consistency of syntax, Minisini needs to check these interfaces, possibly request changes and give hints to the developers. If the story of the pot and the many cooks comes to mind, you are exactly right. Not for nothing does every good kitchen have a chef!

Even if you don't want to become a developer, Gambas users are still called upon to help. The Gambas language is currently undergoing major changes - especially in the course of the transition from Gambas2 to the Gambas3 version and its development. Could you see your favourite in one of the entries below?

• Post your own queries and answers to questions on the mailing lists,
• Send bug reports, because every now and then you find bugs in the development environment (IDE) or in a component,
• posting complete projects on the project website,
• setting up and maintaining forums or blogs on Gambas on the internet,
• writing documentation on the use of Gambas or writing books.