Contributing to an open source project with XCode

[Travis86]

There's this open-source project called Touchgraph which is a sort-of interesting open source project. I was wanting to build it myself and mess around with the source code a little bit, but I can't get it to work.

I downloaded the Graph Layout example and started a new XCode project, then I imported all of the files to the project. One class, TGLayout, implements Runnable, which (I think) means that is the main part of the program. I named the XCode project TGLayout, and it compiled and ran, but it just had a console that said "Hello, World!" (I figure that's some sort of debugging message.)

Why won't it work like it's supposed to? Also, this whole process seems a little inelegant. Is this the way to start working on someone else's program?

 

[scruffy]

It probably is built using a makefile, compiled from the command line. That's the typical way for Unix projects.

 

[Viro]

That project uses Java. I truly suggest getting familiar with programming before messing about with projects of any size. It'll save you a lot of trouble later. This isn't meant to me condescending, but really you need to know how to program in Java before even messing with that Project. It'll save you from making mistakes like saying that Runnable means that is the main part of the program. It isn't. Runnable is an interface that classes implement if they are going to be run as a thread.

The problem with Java is that every class can have a main method(!!). This makes is much harder for you to know which class is actually the entry point of the application (i.e. the main part of the application). Truly, I suggest getting familiar with Java before playing around with such projects.