Question

I want to develop a new feature in Gnuplot. To achieve this, I want to add a new terminal to the existing Gnuplot source code.

I went to this page for downloading: http://sourceforge.net/projects/gnuplot/files/gnuplot/4.6.0/

I have downloaded the tool setup (gp460-win32-setup.exe) and installed it. I also have the source code (gnuplot-4.6.0.tar.gz) downloaded.

• What IDE/compiler should I use do to edit the source code, write my new terminal, compile and check? I am using windows 7

I am not sure if the source code I downloaded is correct. The development page in Gnuplot website says something about CVS which am not sure of.

Can someone guide me with the process of setting up the development environment for Gnuplot?

Answer 1

If I would want to write a new feature for gnuplot on Win7 I’d do something like this:

1. Checkout the source code from the CVS repository. (The installed gnuplot binaries are not going to help you much.)
2. Try compiling the source code. I’d imagine that this is the first milestone and probably not an easy task to achieve!
3. Join the gnuplot mailing list like here in order to ask questions, where there I am sure will be quite a lot, like:
   • Is the new feature an enhancement of an already existing feature?
   • What kind of object do I need to build my new objects on?
   • Is the new feature realizable at all?!
   • Are there any coding guidelines? So that my new code will at some point end up in the repository.
   • …

Once you have accomplished the above you can think about what IDE you should use but this really is not that big of a deal. All you need to take care of is that you can configure the compiler according to step 2 from above^^