Contribute

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Everyone has the skills to contribute to MythTV. Remember that MythTV is a combination of technical and non-technical efforts. There are many ways for you and friends to contribute to improve MythTV even further.


Join us making your favorite media center even better than it already is today.


Code

We welcome code contributions from anyone, whether you have a small fix or a new feature, a lot of programming experience or none at all. Learn more about writing code for MythTV here.


MythTV is primarily written in C++. Feel free to talk to us about your code and experiments in our mailinglists and chatgroups. Or code something up and submit it as a patch or feature to us. find out how to contact us here.


Theme

If you are more into design and graphics you will like the theme possibilities in MythTV to create new looks for the users to look at.


Theming can be as simple and complex as you want it to be. The best way to get started building your own theme is by experimenting with an existing theme. Learn more about this here.


Plugin

Users have the possibility to extend their system with extra functionality by simply adding plugins. Users and developers can write their own plugins that run within MythTV and can be controlled by remote. A fast and easy way to get started is by taking a small existing plugin to start with. You can learn more about this here.


Help

provide assistance to other users on our mailinglists and IRC-channels. Learn more here


Testing

Testing the latest version of MythTV is very important and timesaving for the developers. One does not need to be a developer to retreive the latest code and run it on their machine. But you do need to be aware that going to SVN code implies a certain responsibility on the user's part to debug their own problems, file useful bugreports, and be able to downgrade or upgrade accordingly to fix issues.


Find out how to get the latest code and run it on your machine here.


Translations

If you have language skills, you can work on internationalizing/translating the product. This is needed in the core system as well as the modules.


Documentation

Documentation often lags behind features, improve the documentation to make it easier for new users and developers to get started with MythTV. Some suggestions:

  • Wiki based manual - There's a project underway to create a user Manual which is starting to pick up steam. Contribute to the manual. The manual is available via the wiki pages, if you are not familiar with using a wiki than you can learn it in no-time here
  • Wiki - The wiki contains al the information that should not be in the user manual. keeping the wiki pages up-to-date helps users and developers to find the right information.
  • Screenshots - Screenshots are important for new users to get familiar with MythTV. The Screenshots page needs to be fleshed out, preferably illustrating the default theme as well as a couple of others, and at least one widescreen. Where possible it would be good to add short notes beside the screenshots to help visitors understand them correctly.


Promotion

You can help bringing MythTV to the rest of us in various ways. Some examples are:

  • write articles about MythTV
  • help new MythTV users with their problems in forums, chatrooms (e.g. IRC), etc.
  • Promote MythTV in news groups as a Mediacenter solution (or HTPC). A lot of people just don't know about the existence of MythTV and the possibilities.
  • Post MythTV in binairy-newsgroups as a alternative to the illegal mediacenter downloads (or one of the easy to install MythTV_distros).
  • remind people about the fact you don't need a expensive windows licence to use MythTV.
  • suggest MythTV as a good alternative in mediacenter forums.
  • Etc.