Developer Area

Here is a bunch of developer documentation for Mahara, including design, policy and specific feature documents.

This is for people who want to understand how Mahara works, or want to develop new code or plugins for Mahara. If you want to customise your Mahara - e.g. change the language/theme, or simply install plugins, check out the Customising section.

Developer Documentation

• Mahara Architecture Introduction - this series of articles explains how Mahara fits together, where it's pluggable and why it's written the way it is.
• Plugins - (soon to be) your one-stop-shop for information about developing plugins for Mahara
• Language Packs - how to write a language pack for Mahara, and how to contribute it back
• Wishlist - what documentation did you find missing and would like people to contribute?

Finding your way around

• Mahara Architecture Introduction
• Core Subsystems
• Database conventions
• Development Tutorials
• How to write a view template
• Import/Export
• Language Packs
• Plugins
• Release Policy
• Command Line Interface Framework

Getting set up

• Setting up your development tools
• Setting up a development environment
• Getting Code from Git
• Changing Hostnames

Contributing improvements

• How to submit good bug reports
• Bug Status Policy
• Bite sized code tasks
• Coding guidelines
• Contributing Code
• Commit Policy
• How to Review Code
• Unit Testing

Join in the discussion

We have a discussion forum on mahara.org.

You can also find us in #mahara-dev on irc.freenode.net

If you have not got an IRC client or cannot connect with one, you can use the freenode web client.

Meeting minutes & dev team notes

• Current Tasks
• Developer Meetings
• Packaging
• Release Instructions
• Security Team
• Specifications in Development
• Fixes for significant bugs that might bite later

Useful Resources

• You can subscribe to the master branch on Launchpad to receive an email everytime a commit is made. There is also an  RSS feed of commits if you prefer to receive information that way.
• CIA also lists Mahara commits (and has an RSS feed) in addition to sending them to #mahara-commits on Freenode
• #mahara-dev on freenode (irc.freenode.org) is an IRC channel where the core developers discuss the development of Mahara. This channel is not for support of Mahara (use #mahara instead), but you can lurk and listen in on developer conversations - and even hear about the latest new features as they're added ;)