Wiki > Main > DevelopmentGuide (compare)
Difference: DevelopmentGuide (r38 vs. r37)
Mail: We have a very active developers mailing list no serious Rockbox freak can live without.
IRC: There's always a bunch of friendly and helpful people around in the IRC channel.
Forum: Most users will show up and discuss issues in the Rockbox web forum
You need suitable build tools before you can setup the compiler. Pick one of these:
Development on Windows is also supported using VMs or unix compatibility layers.
You can download a full Ubuntu desktop image here for use with the open source virtual machine Virtual box:
Ubuntu VM (405MB) (username/password): ubuntu/reverse
You can download virtualbox here.
This will give you a complete linux desktop running within Windows with the ARM and simulator compilers already configured and git installed. By default the image is configured for 4 processors, and to pass sound and USB devices through. This should allow audio playback in the uisimulator, and directly copying compiled rockbox builds to a player over USB. If you have a different number of processors, you may wish to allocate fewer or more in the Virtualbox settings.
You can also use Cygwin or Interix to run the development tools directly in Windows. Unfortunately this approach is quite slow, more difficult to setup and not recommended for most users.
These platforms can build rockbox natively.
Get a fresh source to build Rockbox from. We usually recommend you get the sources fresh from the Git repo (How to use Git).
Rockbox requires a specific version of gcc compiled with various options in order to cross compile for each device. Fortunately, Git contains a simple script that will build gcc with the correct options for most platforms.
Our Virtual Box image already includes the most common compilers, but if you want to build them you can use the Linux directions below.
Build rockbox using your acquired sources! If you're using Linux or the suggested cygwin approach, read How to compile Rockbox.
Also note that we have put a whole lot of effort in writing simulators so that you can build, run and try code on your host PC before you build and download your target version. This of course requires a working compiler for your native system.
Before you change any code, make sure to read the contributing information if you want to have any hope of having your changes accepted.
Now, you fixed any bugs? You added any features? Then read appropriate section of UsingGit how to upload your change for review. Of course, you can also check the open bug reports and jump in and fix one of them (or possibly submit a new bug report).
You may also see existing code in the form of a patch. We mostly use gerrit now instead of patches, but not always. See working with patches.
r38 - 10 Oct 2013 - 19:51:09 - MichaelGiacomelliRevision r38 - 10 Oct 2013 - 19:51 - MichaelGiacomelli
Revision r37 - 17 Feb 2013 - 19:12 - MichaelGiacomelli
Copyright © by the contributing authors.