Getting the source code

The Hexatomic source code is hosted on GitHub at https://github.com/hexatomic/hexatomic.

You don't have direct write permissions to this main source code repository, unless you are a core contributor. This means that you will make your changes in your own copy (fork) of the repository, and request that we merge your changes into the main code base when you are finished (pull request).1

Downloading the source code to your computer

First, you need to create a fork of the Hexatomic main repository on GitHub:

  1. Log in to your GitHub account (github.com/login).
  2. Go to https://github.com/hexatomic/hexatomic, and click the Fork button in the upper right-hand corner of the repository page. This will create a copy of the repository under your own account.

To download the source code onto your computer and put it under local version control with Git, type the following command into the terminal of your computer:

git clone https://github.com/<your-GitHub-user-name>/hexatomic.git

It will download the latest version of the source code in the master branch to a sub-directory hexatomic, along with the complete Git version history.

For your actual contribution, you will need to create a new Git branch, but this is explained in detail in section Workflow. For now, all that is left to do is build Hexatomic locally, and get its source code into your IDE.

Build Hexatomic locally

Before you import the Hexatomic source code into the Eclipse IDE, you should now build it locally to check that everything works, and to avoid error messages in the Eclipse IDE.

To build Hexatomic locally, go to the root directory of your local copy of the Hexatomic source code, and run mvn clean install.

Maven then builds Hexatomic and installs artifacts in the local Maven repository.

During the build, some tests are being run that start Hexatomic and automatedly interact with the graphical user interface. You must not use the keyboard or mouse during these GUI tests, as this may interfere with the automated interactions. For more information, see the section Running UI integration tests.

Getting the source code into the Eclipse IDE

If you have set up the Eclipse IDE for development of Hexatomic, as described in the section Development setup, you will have to import the source code from your local Git repository.

To import the Hexatomic into your Eclipse IDE, do the following:

  1. Start Eclipse
  2. Open the Import window via the menu File > Import
  3. Select the import wizard General > Existing Projects into Workspace and click Next >
  4. In Select root directory, select the directory where you have downloaded the Hexatomic source code to (the Git root)
  5. In the Options section of the window, activate Search for nested projects
  6. Click Finish

Congratulations, you are now set up to start contributing to Hexatomic!

Before starting to work on your contribution, please read the section Workflow carefully.

1

For more info on forks and pull requests, read the section Workflow.