Open Source C++ projects for beginners

Question

Hello everyone! I am trying to get into some open source projects that use C++. I have looked at some on sourceforge, tried Google Chrome, OpenOffice.org, but they are too hard of projects. I know some C++, but I just want something that will be easy to add to and fix and can help me polish my C++ skills for the bigger projects. Can anyone guide me with this? I have been looking around, but I can't seem to find the project for me.

Thanks

Answer 1

Sometimes, the best place to start is from scratch. A lot of the open source projects can get very large and complicated (well, not JUST open projects), so if you're interested in contributing, I'd say that you either start your own small project or work on plugins or bug fixes for other projects. Start small and you'll learn along the way. It's difficult to just jump right in without knowing how to swim. After all, the only way to get better at a language is to write programs in it.

Answer 2

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/534311/examples-of-modern-c-in-action
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/109684/what-are-some-examples-of-exceptional-c-open-source-code

look at this similar questions.

Start from small changes or write plugin for some extentiable project. Then try to do bigger change or change part of project ( usualy they are separated on libraries ).

Also you could try to participate in "Google Summer of Code" (http://code.google.com/soc/)

Answer 3

You may want to look at Google Chrome for a good example of C++. It is written with an adherence to Google Style Guide, which is a nice reference for C++ coding style.

Answer 4

WebKit is a good project to work with; it is fairly big, but the code itself is fairly well laid out and easy to work with (I found it much easier to jump right in and start fixing bugs in WebKit than I did in Gecko).

Answer 5

I myself started to contribute to wxWidgets for similar reasons. They have a dedicated page of how to contribute patches and if you look at the Trac page you can easily find a simple bug to fix to get you starting. If you still don't know what to fix, then simply ask on the developer mailing list.

Answer 6

Thanks for the help