While PySoy is intended to be cross-platform, it is primarily developed on Linux which provides most (or all) of its dependencies packaged as system-wide shared libraries, an easy to use build system, and great community support.

If you already have Linux installed (or wish to do so), pick this as an introduction to developing PySoy.

This guide assumes no prior experience with Linux, shells, version control, build systems, or IRC. If you're an experienced Linux user, please just do this without claiming this task since you may only complete two beginner tasks and we have many to choose from.

Before getting started, you will want to connect to IRC (Internet Relay Chat) to get help should you run into any trouble. You can use webchat.freenode.net in your browser for now, but you may want to consider using a desktop IRC client such as Empathy or XChat. Getting comfortable with IRC now will make this task easier and help you as you continue with Google Code-in tasks.

Let's get started - grab a notebook or open a text document to take notes as you go, especially on areas you had difficulty with.

The first thing you need to do is learn how to install already packaged software in order to install Mercurial.

Mercurial is a version control system (VCS) similar to Git (what github uses) and others. These programs allow many people to edit source code, record each developer's contributions, and merge their changes together. Installing Mercurial gives you the "hg" command (the chemical symbol for Mercury) which you'll need next.

Type hg clone http://hg.pysoy.org/libsoy into a Terminal to download the libsoy source code using Mercurial (the "hg" command). To get familiar with working with the Terminal, type these one by one:

• ls to list the files in your current directory
• cd libsoy to change directories to libsoy
• pwd to print working directory, ie "where am i"
• ls again to see the contents of the libsoy directory
• less INSTALL to read the INSTALL directions

If you scroll down while viewing INSTALL you'll find a section specific to your Linux distribution (eg, "Fedora Quickstart") with directions you can usually just copy and paste to a terminal. Does this command look familiar? These commands are to install all the software you need to build libsoy using your package manager, just like installing Mercurial before.

Type ./waf configure which will verify and find all the things needed to compile and run libsoy (many of which you installed in the previous step). If it says it can't find something, you likely didn't copy/paste the whole command (usually multiple lines) in the previous step. Ask for help if this still doesn't work.

Now ./waf build command to compile libsoy. This may take a few minutes the first time you run it, and you may see several warnings which you can ignore for now (there are Google Code-in tasks to clean these up).

If everything went well, type sudo ./waf install to install libsoy. Generally this goes into /usr/local with other software you compile and install by hand (vs with package manager).

Lets see what you've learned!

Type cd ~ to return home ("~" means home directory).

Use Mercurial to clone http://hg.pysoy.org/pysoy

Change directory to the new pysoy directory and use the same waf commands to configure, build, and install as you did with libsoy.

Test your installation by changing to examples directory and type ./CollideBlocks.py

If all went well, a window will pop up with checkered blocks with round edges spinning and smashing into each other. This is one of the programs we commonly use to ensure the rendering and physics engine is working properly.

Hit the Print Screen key (or another method to take a screenshot) as proof of task completion.

While working on this task you should join and remain in #CopyleftGames on Freenode to get help, feedback, and guidance from mentors and other developers.

When you've done, post the screenshot and your notes to this task.