Development

The development of IMDbPY takes place on the imdbpy-devel mailing list, and you should subscribe it; before you start writing code, it's a good idea to expose your ideas to the other developers, so that the development process can be coordinated.

If you just want to write a bug report without subscribing the mailing list, you can send an email to imdbpy-devel@lists.sourceforge.net (moderated for non-subscribers).

The development version of IMDbPY can be found in the svn repository, and you must always refer to this version (and its documentation), if you plan to improve this program.

You can submit patches directly to the mailing list, or you can use the patch tracking system.

Remember that IMDbPY is free software (open source) released under the GPL license, and you must respect its terms.

Development status

There are a lot of things to do; you can read the TODO and describe your ideas in the mailing list!

Here is a short lists of things we are working on:

Objective Planned for Status
Update the SQL database using the plain text diff files. long term It would be really useful, but it sounds like a very complex task; for some thoughts about this, see this short thread.
Timo Schulz worked a lot on this, coming to the conclusion that it's not feasible (at least with the current layout of the database) and that right now it's easier and faster to download the diff files, apply them and rebuild the database from scratch. I mostly do agree.

Search for things like "keyword" and "plot". 4.3-4.4 Done, for keywords, in 4.0.

Develop the Symbian/mobile interface mid-long term We're searching for a developer for the mobile interface.

SQL generic queries mid-long term A way to do free queries on the SQL database would be very cool.
Nobody is working on this.

Fix the web site and the documentation, checking for syntax and grammar errors. as soon as possible Nobody is working on this; the author of the web site and the documentation is a non-native English speaker, and there are a lot of errors.

Improve the test suite. as soon as possible Nobody is seriously working on this; the current test suite is somewhat a mess, and doesn't cover every aspect of the IMDbPY package.

Objective	Planned for	Status
Update the SQL database using the plain text diff files.	long term	It would be really useful, but it sounds like a very complex task; for some thoughts about this, see this short thread. Timo Schulz worked a lot on this, coming to the conclusion that it's not feasible (at least with the current layout of the database) and that right now it's easier and faster to download the diff files, apply them and rebuild the database from scratch. I mostly do agree.
Search for things like "keyword" and "plot".	4.3-4.4	Done, for keywords, in 4.0.
Develop the Symbian/mobile interface	mid-long term	We're searching for a developer for the mobile interface.
SQL generic queries	mid-long term	A way to do free queries on the SQL database would be very cool. Nobody is working on this.
Fix the web site and the documentation, checking for syntax and grammar errors.	as soon as possible	Nobody is working on this; the author of the web site and the documentation is a non-native English speaker, and there are a lot of errors.
Improve the test suite.	as soon as possible	Nobody is seriously working on this; the current test suite is somewhat a mess, and doesn't cover every aspect of the IMDbPY package.