First Time Guide to Rockbox Development

Welcome to our humble project. In order to get your hands dirty as quickly and smoothly as possible, here follows our suggested approach!

Join the Rockbox Community

Mail: We have a very active developers mailing list no serious Rockbox freak can live without.

IRC: There's always a bunch of friendly and helpful people around in the IRC channel.

Forum: Most users will show up and discuss issues in the Rockbox web forum

Set Up Your Environment

You need a cross-compiler and linker to build the code. Pick one of these:

• Linux (or any other unix-like OS): Building the cross compiler. This describes how to build and install gcc for your target.
• Windows: Set up a Cygwin development environment OR set up a coLinux development environment OR set up a VMWare development environment OR set up a Interix development environment.

Get The Source

Get a fresh source to build Rockbox from. We usually recommend you get the sources fresh from the SVN repo (How to use SVN), but you can also get the latest tarball. However, SVN is strongly recommended.

Build Rockbox

Build rockbox using your acquired sources! If you're using Linux or the suggested cygwin approach, read How to compile Rockbox.

Also note that we have put a whole lot of effort in writing simulators so that you can build, run and try code on your host PC before you build and download your target version. This of course requires a working compiler for your native system.

Change Rockbox

Before you change any code, make sure to read the contributing information if you want to have any hope of having your changes accepted.

Now, you fixed any bugs? You added any features? Then make a patch and head over to the patch tracker and submit it. Of course, you can also check the open bug reports and jump in and fix one of them (or possibly submit a new bug report).

The Feature Ideas section of the Rockbox Technical Forum may also be a source of inspiration for those unsure of where to begin.