The VideoLAN Forums

Here's where I'm at: I've read through a beginner's book on c++ and now I want to start tinkering with open source programs to learn more. I can read the source and know what most of the syntax is. But, it's incredibly complex and I don't really understand most of the c++ libraries. Should I buy another, more advanced c++ book and sink another week into that, or would it be less time consuming just to start tweaking stuff and play around with it?

Also, is there a guide to the source code? There's not a whole lot of documentation on the inner workings of the source.

As I know, most of the source code of VLC are written with C language, except something about interface. If you are new to VLC source code, I think you should start at 3 files, which are vlc.c, libvlc.h,libvlc.c and locate in src directory. I recommend you read code using a software called "source insight", it's very convenient in reading source code.

And I'd like to talk about the source architecture of VLC. First,you should know VLC is a module composed software, there is a core surrounded by many modules. Most of works is done by modules,such as dumux,decode,output ,.etc.In its source directory, the program's core is in src directory, in modules directory you can see the source code of all modules,include directory contains many needed header files,then other directories are not that important, at least for newbies tha't enough.

Then open your source inght and dive in VLC source code, have a good time

If you want to start to help and you are still a beginner, I would advise you to start with an easy module; like Qt4 GUI, or ncurses interface.

Starting with the core of VLC may not be the easiest thing to do.