After Dominic and Ewan showed their FreeWPC Twilight Zone and Corvette at the UK Pinball Party I was so keen I signed up to help the project.
If anyone else is interested in joining in I've cross posted the info pack the Dominic posted to the mailing list:
If anyone else is interested in joining in I've cross posted the info pack the Dominic posted to the mailing list:
Hi and thanks for registering your interest in FreeWPC!
This pack contains a few links to get you started with FreeWPC. There's lots of information out there and an ever-growing community and Brian, Ewan and I would like to welcome you to it.
Mailing list/discussion group
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/freewpc
The mailing list should be your first port of call when it comes to asking information as well as for searching for answers to already-asked questions.
The mailing list should be used in preference to the Facebook group (below) as not everyone uses Facebook but everyone has an email address.
Facebook page
http://www.facebook.com/pages/FreeWPC/152536318161355
If you have Facebook, please visit the page and click the 'Like' button!
FreeWPC website
http://www.oddchange.com/freewpc/
The website has a few links and videos an FAQ and the GCC 6809 compiler patch.
FreeWPC Manual
http://freewpc.googlecode.com/svn/doc/freewpc/index.html
The manual has LOADS of really great information, when you download the source code you'll get a copy of the manual which can be search and you can contribute changes to it too.
FreeWPC GoogleCode? site
http://code.google.com/p/freewpc/
The Google Code site has a downloads section, a wiki and a bug tracker.
If you find bugs, you can either report them directly or ask on the mailing list if you're not sure if you've found one. The more bugs reported the quicker things get fixed; if you don’t report it don't assume we already know about the problem.
The Wiki has lots of information which is complementary to the manual so don't forget to visit it.
FreeWPC Source Code
The three primary git repositories are located on github, Brain's one is the primary one and all others are derived from and linked to it.
https://github.com/bcd/freewpc - Brian Dominy's work, the primary repository
https://github.com/sonnyjim/freewpc - Ewan Meadows' work, primarily for Twilight Zone
https://github.com/hydra/freewpc - Dominic Clifton's work, primarily for Corvette
The HOWTO guides contain information on creating a github account and downloading the source code via Eclipse + Egit. (See below).
FreeWPC is open-source (GPL), in practice this means you can download it, change it and tinker with it to your heart's content but if you release a product that uses it then you MUST share any changes you make to the GPL'd code with the FreeWPC project. The best way of doing this is just to fork the codebase and push your changes to your fork and then create a pull-request that encompasses your changes. Any code we like will be then added to the main repository. Even if your code is not added to the main repository making it available on github means that others can still benefit from it.
HOWTO Guides
http://code.google.com/p/freewpc/downloads/list?can=2&q=HOWTO&colspec=Filename Summary Uploaded ReleaseDate Size DownloadCount
There are some HOWTO guides which currently live in the downloads area of the GoogleCode? site.
A guide has been created by Dominic Clifton that shows you how to set everything you need up on windows in a simple step-by-step guide complete with screenshots. Even if you don't plan to use Windows please have a look as it covers github account creates, ssh keys, Visual Pinball/VisualPINMAME, Eclipse IDE and so on.
A guide has been created by Ewan Meadows that very briefly gives you the steps needed to compile the source code on a Debian linux installation (Ubuntu), it does not cover things like creating your own fork using git/github and Eclipse, It can be found here:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1lJAUQUZS7hYr4jWxJRFTBjnLlFwXrUMLzm8V4sY5Xgk/edit?hl=en_US&pli=1
If you have any comments on the guides please join the FreeWPC mailinglist/group and post feedback there so the guides can be updated. If you want to co-own a guide please let us know!
Videos
There are various videos of FreeWPC on the net, Brian, Dominic and Ewan have their own youtube channels which can be found here:
Brian - http://www.youtube.com/user/bcdominy
Ewan - http://www.youtube.com/user/sonnyjimbod
Dominic - http://www.youtube.com/user/dominicc1974#p/c/FE9A0DC4326A4CF1
If you try FreeWPC in your machine PLEASE capture it on video and post it online so we can see it!
Having a youtube account can also be very useful when showing other FreeWPC developers problems. If you want to upload a video for a bug report you can make the video public but unlisted and then just share the link with us on the mailinglist or in a bug report.
Ok, I think that's about it for now, the first thing you should do is go and join the mailing list and say 'Hi' to us all, then follow one of the HOWTOs above.
Thanks,
The FreeWPC Development Community