Helping to Develop Mozile
Mozile is an open source project with a small but friendly community behind it. We welcome anyone willing to lend us a hand. Whether it's a bug report or spelling correction, a patch or a new module, every improvement is appreciated.
This chapter is meant to help you climb the learning curve and make it as easy as possible for you to contribute.
Mozile doesn't require any fancy tools. Everything you need is probably on your computer already. If not, you can get it for free on the Internet.
Must Have
- Browser - Mozile runs in a web browser, so you'll need one of those. Firefox is probably the best one to develop in since it's both free and cross-platform. You'll also have access to tools like the DOM Inspector, the Venkman JavaScript debugger, and helpful extensions like FireBug.
- Text Editor - Except for images and zip files, all of Mozile's files can be edited with a normal text editor. You'll probably want a programmer's text editor, with more features than Windows Notepad, but the choice is entirely up to you.
Nice to Have
- CVS Client - Not strictly necessary, but this will allow you to get the latest code from our CVS repository. There are many free and open-source CVS tools available, either as command-line or GUI applications. See the Mozile source page and contribution page.
- IRC Client - Not strictly necessary, but nice if you want to talk to other Mozile developers in our IRC channel: irc://irc.freenode.net/#mozile.
That's it. Read on for how you can use these tools to help develop Mozile.