SourceTree for Non-Developers

[dfort]

Part of the "fun" of being involved with open source projects like Magic Lantern is seeing how it keeps changing. There's a lot more that is going on than just what is on the download pages. You can get a lot more out of ML if you set up a development environment but even if you're a new user with no coding experience, or no interest in learning how to code, you can follow along with what is going on by installing a free app made by the same company that runs Bitbucket.org -- that's the site where the ML repository lives.

Download and install the SourceTree app which is available for either Mac or Windows. If you're on Linux you're probably more of a power user though there are other graphical front ends to the Mercurial source control management tool that runs under Bitbucket and SourceTree. You can try TortoiseHg if you want something similar to SourceTree in Linux.

To set up Magic Lantern in SourceTree simply select, Clone from URL:



Then take this part of the URL from the Magic Lantern Bitbucket repository:



You can copy and paste from here:

Code Select Expand

https://bitbucket.org/hudson/magic-lantern

This will create a directory called "magic-lantern" in your home directory or anywhere else you want to save the Magic Lantern source code.



Even if you aren't interested in reading the source code there are lots of interesting bits of documentation in the files. You can also switch around the various branches to see what the latest changes were. The best part is that SourceTree will let you know when a new commit has been uploaded so you can read the latest commit messages and update your local repository.



I won't get into how to fork or compile or anything like that in this topic. This is just for users who want want to take their lurking to a higher level than simply reading what's on the forum.