The wxWidgets Community

The wxWidgets community is a vibrant one, with two mailing lists: wx-users (for users) and wx-dev (for contributors). The web site has news, articles, and links to releases, and there is also the wxWidgets "Wiki," a set of web pages where everyone can add information. A forum is also available for developers and users alike. Here's a list of the web addresses for these resources:

• http://www.wxwidgets.org: the wxWidgets home page

• http://lists.wxwidgets.org: the mailing list archives

• http://wiki.wxwidgets.org: the wxWidgets Wiki

• http://www.wxforum.org: the wxWidgets forum

As with most open source projects, wxWidgets is developed using a CVS repository, a source management system that keeps track of code history. In order to prevent a chaotic free-for-all, a small number of developers have write access to CVS, and others can contribute by posting bug reports and patches (currently handled by SourceForge's trackers). Development occurs on two main branches: the "stable" branch, where only binary-compatible bug fixes are allowed, and the "development" branch (CVS head). So-called stable releases are even-numbered (for example, 2.4.x) and development releases are odd-numbered (for example, 2.5.x). Users can wait for new releases or download the source from the appropriate branch by anonymous CVS.

Decisions about API changes and other technical issues are made by consensus, usually by discussion on the wx-dev list. As well as the main wxWidgets community, many projects have spun off and enjoy their own communitiesfor example wxPython and wxPerl (see Appendix E, "Third-Party Tools for wxWidgets").