BOINC software development overview

BOINC is free software, distributed under the ​Lesser General Public License (LGPL), version 3 or later. The University of California holds the copyright on all BOINC source code. By submitting contributions to the BOINC code, you irrevocably assign all right, title, and interest, including copyright and all copyright rights, in such contributions to The Regents of the University of California, who may then use the code for any purpose that it desires.

• The BOINC development process
• Help wanted - programming
• Quality Assurance Workflow (under discussion)
• Help wanted - translation
• boinc_dev, an email list for BOINC developers
• Coding style
• Debugging the client on Windows

Get and build BOINC software

• Get source code
• Software prerequisites
• Building on Unix
  • Installing python-mysqldb
• Building applications
• Building the client
  • Building the client on Android
  • Linux VM for building 'compatible' client

Design docs for current development

• Generalized credit
• BOINC on Android
  • GUI discussion
  • GUI development items
  • Current implementation
  • Building apps
  • Original planning document
• Volunteer data archival

Design docs for proposed development

• LDAP support
• Scheduling for multi-user projects
• Job prioritization
• Maintaining upload statistics
• Locality scheduling redesign
• Support for OpenID
• Remodel of computing prefs
• support for synchronous GPU apps
• rewrite of HTML code using a Web Template Engine
• Windows Issues

Implementation notes

Client: general

• Client data model
• File structure
• FSM structure
• Main loop logic
• Host measurements
• Host identification
• Memory management
• GUI notices
• Client app configuration

Client: scheduling

• Client scheduling policies

Client: packaging

• Sandbox implementation
• Windows installer (V5)
• Client package layout for Unix
• Version 6 Windows installer, design
• Version 6 Windows installer, implementation
• Unix client packaging
• Spec info for RPMs

Client: screensaver

• Screensaver enhancements

Client: Manager

• BOINC Manager
• Redesign of Choose Project page

Server: general

• Job size matching
• Multi-user project features
• APIs for remote job submission
• Homogeneous app version
• job runtime estimation
• Credit system as of 5/2010
• The BOINC database
• Backend state transitions
• The logic of backend programs
• Debugging server components
• Notes on BOINC server security
• Export statistics for 3rd-party sites
• Single-job submission
• Adaptive replication
• Low-level validator framework

Server: scheduler

• Scheduler job matchmaking

Server: Packaging

• Unix project packaging

PHP code (web pages and RPCs)

• PHP database abstraction layer
• Style Sheets

Protocols

• Protocol overview
• The scheduling server protocol
• Scheduling server timing and retry policies
• Data server protocol
• Persistent file transfers
• XML notes

Simulation

• The BOINC Client Emulator
• ​EmBoinc BOINC server emulator

Source code documentation (in progress)

• API
• Client
• Manager
• Server components
• PHP code

Miscellaneous

• BOINC/Condor integration
• Low latency computing
• Credit system proposal
• Organizational Grid Management
• Python-based simplified app development
• Python master/worker system
• Cross-project user identification
• Simulator of a project using locality scheduling
• Preferences
• Trickle messages
• How to see what has changed between two versions of an executable
• XML formats
• Diagnostics API
• Simple Account Creation
• BOINC on Phones

Historical

Design docs for old versions, or for ideas that never happened.

• Virtual machine apps (deprecated)
• Old client scheduling policies
• Client scheduling changes
• Client CPU/GPU scheduling
• Work fetch and GPUs
• Automatic update
• Automated estimation of job characteristics
• Python testing framework
• Version 4 runtime system
• Mac/Intel plan
• Old Mac project plan
• Design of version 5 setup
• Mac Menubar
• Usability discussion
• Screensaver logic