In order to make changes to the The Twenty-Four Hour Movie codebase, you must be familiar with the programming language (Objective-C and Cocoa) and the version control system (Git and GitHub). You must also be familiar with the different technologies used in The Twenty-Four Hour Movie, and with the codebase itself. A starting point for this is the Overview of the The Twenty-Four Hour Movie codebase help page.

The source code for The Twenty-Four Hour Movie is hosted on GitHub. GitHub, if you’re not familiar, is a free, community-oriented source code hosting service that operates using the Git version control system. In order to contribute to The Twenty-Four Hour Movie, you will need a GitHub account. If you do not already have one, visit github.com to sign up for a free developer account.

Once you have a GitHub account, you can then fork the The Twenty-Four Hour Movie code to make your changes. All contributions are made in forks, separate copies of the codebase. That way the original code stays under the author’s control.

Forking the Twenty-Four Hour Movie codebase:
  1. Log in to github.com.

  2. Open the The Twenty-Four Hour Movie project page at http://github.com/RISCfuture/twentyfour.

  3. Click the Fork button next to the project title.

  4. Copy or note the URL labeled “Your Clone URL”. This is the URL you will use to check out your source code.

  5. In Terminal, run git clone <your clone URL> to create a copy of the project on your computer.

You now have your own copy of the The Twenty-Four Hour Movie codebase on your hard drive. You can then make your changes, commit them, and push them to your repository.

When you are finished with your changes, you have two options. You can either compile and distribute your own version (see View the license for redistributing modified copies of The Twenty-Four Hour Movie), or you can submit to the author a pull request to have your feature added to the original The Twenty-Four Hour Movie. Compiling and distributing your own version puts you in charge of the direction of your Twenty-Four Hour Movie, but the project home page advertises only the original copy.

If you believe your feature is bug free and would be a worthwhile addition to the original The Twenty-Four Hour Movie, you can send the author a pull request to have your feature evaluated.

Sending a pull request:
  1. In your web browser, open the home page of your Twenty-Four Hour Movie fork.

  2. Click the Pull Request button next to the project title.

  3. Add “RISCfuture” as a recipient, and click the Add button.

  4. Click the Send Pull Request button.

The author will receive a request to review your feature. If it is bug-free and appropriate, it will appear in a future version of The Twenty-Four Hour Movie. You will retain credit for your code in the Git version history of both your fork and the original project.