Developing XBMC for Windows

Team-XBMC have ported the XBMC Media Center software to Windows some time ago.

XBMC is a huge open source project and it takes loads of people working together to maintain it for all platforms, that is why Team-XBMC is always on the lookout for C/C++ programmers to volunteer in assisting us with the development of XBMC. Whether you have contributed to The XBMC Project in the past or not, please consider doing so now.

Those of you who are completely unfamiliar with XBMC can get a good overview of it on XBMC and XBMC FAQ.

End-users (non-programmers)
You can help too by downloading XBMC for Windows, testing it, and reporting bugs and issues. Also, spread the word about XBMC for Windows to your friends and family, we are sure they will enjoy it too.

Developers (programmers)
You should be proficient in C/C++ programming language, and allthough not really required knowledge of OpenGL or multimedia programming is a plus, as well as prior cross-platform or porting development experience.

The Win32 development platform is Microsoft Windows XP and Windows Vista. There are Visual Studio .NET (2003, 2005, and 2008) project files available in our git repo.

Hardware requirements

 * 32-bit Intel (x86-processor) based computer with Windows XP or Windows Vista, and a ATI Radeon 9200/X1600, Intel GMA950, or NVIDIA 6-Series 3D GPU (Graphics Processing Unit), or later with OpenGL or DirectX compatible video device drivers, (XBMC GUI requires at least OpenGL 1.3 or DirectX 9.0c support to run smoothly at an acceptable frame-rate in standard-definition, to run XBMC high-definition a more modern GPU is recommended).

Detailed technical information
For more details please visit the Development Notes section of this manual.

Source code
The XBMC source code is in our git repository on github.com. Full instructions for compiling/builing XBMC under Windows is available here:
 * HOW-TO compile XBMC for Windows from source code

General guidelines

 * Code documentation (DocBook, rst, or doxygen for the code documentation steps, preferably the latter, doxygen)
 * Self-containment - XBMC should be as little dependent as possible on operating-system and third-party services/deamons/libraries
 * XBMC should for example contain all file-system and network-client (like samba) support built-into the XBMC package
 * Modular design - independent modules made up by localized/isolated code libraries without dependencies
 * XBMC should still compile and run if a non-essencial module/library is disabled or removed
 * Aim for the GUI/interface to run smoothly on a low spec computer (less than 1Ghz)
 * 3D graphic controller (GPU) will always be required hardware for XBMC so try to utilize the GPU as much as possible
 * Avoid harddisk trashing (excess read/write/erase cycles), so no harddrive paging, (utilize RAM memory intead).
 * Fast load and boot times for end-user perception (other thing can still run/start in the background without the user knowledge)