Developer Experience Review

During the period 25th to 29th January 2015 I'll perform a review of the developer experience. The journey starts at http://developer.gnome.org. My goal is to create a GTK 3 application in C called "Whiteboard" using Builder. Whiteboard provides a mean to create and browse groups of files, applications, links and images. I will develop on Fedora Rawhide.

Repository: https://github.com/Urne/whiteboard-app

Programming Background

I've programmed using procedural C++ / OpenCV for half a year and programmed using Java / Processing for one year. There will surely be concepts of the C language introduced which I haven't stumbled upon before. I have no idea what to expect.

Agenda

• Install the tools necessary to write a GNOME application in C. (so far F22 with Builder).
• Make the project folder, define a workflow for writing and compiling.
• Create a GTK Window
• Define a structure which can hold filenames, application names, links and visual locations.
• Read a pre-defined structure variable and display char arrays in the GTK Window
• Create a function which can create sample structure variables.
• Create a GTK headerbar.
• Create a GTK button which calls the function.
• Create a GTK Dialog with fields which the user need to fill. The input will upon pressing a button, be passed to a function which can create a structure variable from it.
• Expand structure to include images.

Feedback

Thoughts on the experience will be collected here.

• What prerequisites do I need to develop a GTK application? What development environment is recommended? If it is distro-specific, then a collection of links to distro-specific guides might be helpful.-bastianilso