Wind in my sails

This year as part of one of my 2009 goals, I recently got interested in trying to contribute to World Wind development after downloading a version a couple of years ago. I am primarily a Java developer but I have done C# .NET development on the 1.1 Framework around 2003-2004. In any case I have a goal of being able to contribute here as well as pick up some more knowledge around .NET. Maybe for now I can turn some of my questions or any tips into more detailed documentation for new contributors in the future (more documentation can never hurt right? )

Getting Started

I have the professional version of Visual Studio .NET 2003 (not sure if it can be used with .NET 2.0+ Frameworks).

1)So I started out with installing Visual C# 2008 Express(http://www.microsoft.com/express/product/)

2)Following the wiki
-I downloaded the .NET 2.0 Framework SDK just in case (I am not sure if this necessary: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/d...displaylang=en)
-Next I got the Nov 2007 DirectX SDK (http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/d...displaylang=en)


3) With tortoiseSVN I checked out the latest code from SVN repo ( https://nasa-exp.svn.sourceforge.net...runk/WorldWind)

4) I opened the solutions file in C# 2008, and had it convert the projects after making a backup.

5) Under Build > Build Configuration I changed the Active Solution Configuration to 'Debug' from 'Debug MSRS' (I don't know if this is needed)

5) I tried to Run the app with Debug > Start Debug. It said there were build errors (more on that later), but I could run last successful build, which I did. So WorldWind started and I pointed its Cache file to my existing installed WorldWind 1.4 cache directory.

Success!

Questions:
My first question is, did I miss anything or do anything i shouldn't have?

Second, I see that the conversion done by VS 2008, changes all the .csproj files in the source. Assuming at some point, I wanted to make some contributions what is the policy on checking in projects? Would a 2008 .csproj be backwards-compatible with VS 2005 developers?

When I right-click on any project in the WorldWind solution in VS and view the Properties window, under Targeted Framework: is shows '.NET Framework 3.5'
- Is this part of the "conversion"?
- In all the documentation I have read, WW 1.4(.1) is on .NET 2.0. Are any changes I make for potential contributions possibly not backwards compatible as a result? Should I manually change each projects' Targeted Framework to 2.0? Is there a way to do this for the entire solution at once and not manually changing it in every single project? What is this setting specifically doing? More research will be needed on my part for this one I think.

Finally the build errors
If I build the project I get about 14 Errors, all in the DstileGUI project.

Errors look like:

Code:

Error 1 The type or namespace name 'GDAL' could not be found
(are you missing a using directive or an assembly reference?)
D:\coding\WorldWind\svn\DstilePlugin\GDALImageStore.cs 37 9 DstileGUI

In the project references are references to gdal_csharp.dll and gdalconst_csharp.dll. There is a using GDAL; statement in these classes.

I tried a few things, which I can elaborate on, but it seems as if there may be some mismatch between the gdal version and the DstileGUI code? This page seems to point out that there new Namespace conventions being used with GDAL for C# in version 1.4.0 and 1.5.0 of GDal.

I wonder if they included the right version of the .dll with the source code?


Still waiting for responses from the World Wind Central forums. The Developers Corner there seem pretty quiet but there are a few other recent threads.