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Platform Developer Guide

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Sirikata Components

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Introduction for Platform Developers

Sirikata is a large system composed of a large number of independent services and components. Adding a new feature or fixing a bug can be a daunting task given the size of the code base. The Platform Developer’s Guide provides a roadmap to help you get started.

The guide tries to provide three things. First, it provides a high-level map of the components of the system and the code base. This should let you understand the pieces of the system, how they fit together, and which component and code you should look at to make your change. Second, each service and component is broken down and described in more detail. This should provide you enough detail to dig into the code for a component and start to make changes. Third, a small set of general tutorials for how to make changes to the system. These are specific to the code base, but not specific to any particular component. The tutorials address issues such as how to create a plugin, how to work with the options system, and how to handle new dependencies.

Who is this for?

This document is targetted at developers who will be working on the Sirikata code, rather than just using it’s components to deploy a world. If you need to fix a bug in the system or want to add a new plugin (e.g. a new scripting language), then you should be reading this guide. If you want to deploy your own world or learn about scripting objects, you should start back at the Welcome document.

The guide is oriented towards the primary C++ code base. While some of the content (for instance, the Sirikata Components) will be helpful regardless of the code base you are working on, specifics about developing for other implementations should be found in their respective guides.

Getting Started

As mentioned above, you probably want to start with one of the three main sections:

  • A Tour of the Sirikata Code - A technical tour of the system and the code repositories.
  • Sirikata Components - A breakdown of the services and components of the system, with details of their operation.
  • Platform Development Tutorials - A series of tutorials describing certain aspects of the system which aren’t specific to any component but which any developer will encounter when working with the system.