Getting started with opkg development
=====================================

This is a brief list of areas where new contributors can help with opkg.

## General tasks

- Test cases

    - opkg has a set of fairly self-explanatory test cases in 'tests/regress'.
      Each test is a python script which is executed from the Makefile in that
      directory. Adding test cases should be fairly straightforward if you have
      experience using opkg on the command line, little or no knowledge of the
      internals of opkg should be needed.

- Refactor long/complex functions

    - There are still several 100+ line functions within the opkg code base that
      should be refactored into a sequence of shorter functions which each do
      just one thing.

## Specific skills needed

If you have any knowledge in these areas, we could really use help!

- Build system

    - opkg currently uses autotools but we don't have anyone regularly involved
      in the project who knows this system well. If you're good with autotools,
      the build scripts need some review and probably aren't perfect. If you
      know another system well, especially cmake, we may be interested in
      changing the build system to this instead of autotools.

- Man pages

    - Again, no-one involved in opkg at the moment is an expert on man page
      syntax. If you are, the documentation could use a lot of work!

## Other things to check

- Issue tracker [1]

    - Some of the issues may be suitable for new contributors, have a look and
      use your judgement.

- Mailing list [2]

    - Just ask :)

[1]: https://code.google.com/p/opkg/issues/list
[2]: opkg-devel@googlegroups.com