CiviCRM Community Forums (archive)

As a result of customising CiviCRM and Drupal, I have become increasingly familar with php and mysql (past MSSQL DBADMIN, VB.NET). I have made significant progress already with generating my own reports, templates and scripts.
I would like, however, to be more 'connected' to the CiviCRM development and am asking for any pointers on what to know and what tools to use, for developing my own patches and extensions to the CiviCRM codebase.
Currently I use Notepad++, CodeLobster, Eclipse (Aptana) and have access to both local development virtual machines and external VPS and dedicated servers running everything from Ubuntu to Centos and RHEL and one dedicated running MS Server.

I know I am jumping into the deep-end... (but that's how I learned to swim!)

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I am planning to develop an easier reporting interface (for the end-user) and mobile applications for browsing/updating using Windows 7 Phone and Android (provides CiviCRM with SugarCRM/Salesforce abilities). All this would be done using a suitable licensing framework (GNU).

Thanks for the link to the CiviMobile; I had no idea this was in development (I was messing with theming CiviCRM for mobile views of 'certain' pages before going the custom application route (linking calendars and contacts helping with caching etc).

I have been reading the docs about the developments in custom reports, which were the inspiration behind the first of my own custom reports. The new API is fantastic and I have had some success with using this.

"Blog posts in the architecture series", er', where is that exactly? I have been reading the 'blog', is that where you mean?

One of the reasons behind my interest in 'dev' is knowing more about the system. On two occasions, I have made some changes to CiviCRM that have not went as planned, so the idea of setting up both a site based on the current stable version and one in development would provide me with the opportunity to:

1) Check the functionality of new stable versions (and the integration with our other sites)
2) Customise only if necessary, because it may have been included in newer versions
3) Complete advanced Drupal/CiviCRM theming without affecting the production version.

I already have a few 'mirrored' setups, I am just enquiring as to the best way to share my achievements with the rest of the community, other than in the forum. (I am again starting to use the documentation sections, but perhaps not the best way to interact, or to test suggestions...)

Quote from: mcarson on July 04, 2011, 11:38:09 am

"Blog posts in the architecture series", er', where is that exactly? I have been reading the 'blog', is that where you mean?

http://civicrm.org/category/civicrm-blog-categories/civicrm-architecture-series

X+

In the same vein, you might also find this interesting if you're writing patches or extensions for core:

http://arms.dl.locker10.com/devel-doc/cheatsheet.html