Development

This page provides a short overview of software development in OpenCog.

Download, Build, & Install

Build instructions are located here: Building OpenCog. How to download OpenCog source from Github and compile.
Report build problems at the opencog mailing list.

Tutorials, User Guides, HOWTO's

Getting Started - Easy to follow tutorials about the basics of OpenCog.
Hopfield network emulator - using attention allocation dynamics to memorize patterns.
Tutorial Sessions 2009: with screencasts

Getting Involved

Information on how to Volunteer
Read the OpenCogPrime:WikiBook, note the sections on atoms, nodes, and links.
Check recent development updates and current goals at Discussion and GSoC 2012 Ideas Page. Visit our GSoC Page.
Read background information at Publications; review the section System Documentation below.
Join the IRC channel #opencog on Freenode
Building OpenCog
You can start with some Quick tasks that need to be done, or for more ambitious there are some Not so quick tasks.

System Documentation

The AGI Summer School 2009 had lectures explaining many of the ideas in OpenCog, which are available online at http://agi-school.org. Major components of the core framework, listed in order of complexity/layering:

AtomSpace - Overview of OpenCog's core data store.
Atom types - List of atom types currently documented/in use
Atomspace Visualization
Scheme - The scheme shell/repl loop/scheme language bindings/programming interface
Python - Python programming interface
Pattern matcher - Performing queries against the AtomSpace
Rule engine - a forwards and backward chainer for combining rules.
NLP pipeline - the current state of affairs in the natural language processing pipeline.
Embodiment - the software powering the Hanson Robotics robots.
OpenPsi - Rule selection system
ECAN - Attention allocation
PLN - probabilistic reasoning.
ComboReduct - Internal programming language to represent patterns/skills; Reduct reduces it to a normal form.
MOSES - Meta Optimizing Semantic Evolutionary Search. Evolves programs in Combo.

Specific subtopics can be found in various categories, such as the Category:Infrastructure Documentation or Category:Embodiment.

Development Guidelines & Tools

Development standards - Code formatting and development practices
Set-up a QT Creator Project for OpenCog
File bugs at Github.
Unit tests are strongly encouraged for any new code. We also use coverage testing to keep track of what code needs more thorough testing. A great beginners task is to design tests that will improve our coverage statistics.

Future Planning

There are several architectural design tasks planned for OpenCog. Some are a long way off, while others are more of a priority. However, there have been discussions on these topics and so records are kept here to avoid rehashing the same arguments when we DO come to implementing these tools.

OpenCog