[GRASS-dev] [Bug] Fix currently ignored Flake8 warnings #1522

[Markus Neteler]

Hi Shubham Swati,

On Thu, Apr 22, 2021 at 6:08 PM Shubham Swati Prasad
<h20200049 at goa.bits-pilani.ac.in> wrote:
>
> Respected sir/mam,
> This is with reference to the bug mentioned in the subject line. I had commented on GitHub regarding this bug, that I'm new to open source projects and coding, but I'm interested to work on it.

First of all, welcome here!

> One of the respected members replied and told me to first clone and compile the code. I have cloned the code. After that, I executed the following two commands:
> git remote add upstream https://github.com/OSGeo/grass
> git remote -v
> After this can I directly start editing the code? Or compilation is still required? I am new to this and I'm not able to understand the compilation. I am using Ubuntu 20.04 Kindly help me with this.

Your questions are right. When looking at this document (which I
initially thought to send as an answer) I see the documentation gap
therein:
https://github.com/OSGeo/grass/blob/master/CONTRIBUTING.md#first-time-setup

NOTE TO Devs: We should expand the "first time setup" part and add
some hints concerning the source code compilation.

Here my attempt to

General concept:
GRASS GIS is written in a small (and happy) mixture of programming
languages. The major part of the source code is written in C language
which requires a compiler to be turned into executables ("binaries").
About 30% is written in Python which is an interpreted language, hence
"just" needs the Python program to be installed.
Now, to turn the source code package into an installed binary package,
the so-called "compilation" is needed. While the source code consists
of thousands of C and Python files (plus HTML documentation), the
"Makefile" system included does the job of compiling the source code
in the right order, generating the manual pages, etc.

In essence, the way of installation of the compiler tools + Python
depends on the operating system. To facilitate this, we have collected
copy-paste instructions for most operating systems in our Wiki:
https://grasswiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Compile_and_Install

What's next:
Please check the Wiki page (hope the attempt of an intro above helps;
pls ask otherwise here in the list) and give it a try.
I am happy to add an extra section to the CONTRIBUTING.md file (or
another place, if the devs prefer) to fill the gap in the document.

Best,
Markus


-- 
Markus Neteler, PhD
https://www.mundialis.de - free data with free software
https://grass.osgeo.org
https://courses.neteler.org/blog