Ask HN: how do you tweak and see changes in an opensource desktop software?

1 points by erjcan 8y ago ↗ HN

I want to play around, tweak an open source desktop app (the gui of soapUI).

Do I need to always reinstall it to see the changes/tweaks i made in its source codebase?

How do I even start?

clone the code from its github repo to a folder on my machine? then What?

1 comment

[ 2.1 ms ] story [ 15.7 ms ] thread

The first step is to be able to compile it. Just clone and compile it. There are usually hidden dependencies, secret configuration, a few missing technical details, ... You will be busy at least for a week until you can compile and run the original version without modifications. (You may have to ask in the mailing list of forum of the project to get some help with the details.)

Once you have the original version running, ask again.