Active C++ project to contribute to

Question

I am a self-taught c++/java programmer (I will be starting uni in August though!). I have worked on one project in which I was part of an active team. I really felt I learnt the most and gained a lot of experience while working with the team. Unfortunately it was a small closed source project which has recently taken a slumber.

I'm looking for some active open source c++ projects which I could contribute to (preferably that are mainly developed on the linux platform). The other project I worked on was a video game, however, I would like to contribute to a project which has a functional purpose (other than to amuse).

Any suggestions on possible projects?

Note: I've already checked sourceforge and freshmeat. The only problem is that many of the projects I look into seem to be dormant or not have a group of developers.

Answer 1

Why not trawl sourceforge or code.google.com or codeplex? Hundreds of open source programs on those sites, and very many of them are c++.

Edit

I have looked at sourceforge and freshmeat (I'll check out the other two). However, those sites don't really give a accurate view of how active the project is. They have many projects which are dormant, only have 1 developer, etc

Well... there's the Source Forge Most Active Projects List; that'll get you the top projects in terms of how frequently they are updated; sure signs of an active project. There's also the Source Forge Project Help Wanted page, which'll at least get you folks that are trying to start a team.

I haven't found anything equivalent on code.google.com, and I think I'll take back my suggestion for codeplex... codeplex is almost always .NET oriented; there isn't even a C++ tag.

Answer 2

Did you check boost.org (Boost Mailing List).?

Answer 3

MongoDB is written in C++, and seems like a pretty active NoSQL database. Maybe you could try hacking on that.

http://www.mongodb.org/display/DOCS/Source+Code