[wp-hackers] How to familiarize with Code Base ?

[Brian Layman]

If you want to just look at a straight code tree, you can always browse 
the trac repo here:
http://core.trac.wordpress.org/browser/tags/3.3.1

I'm sure you realize that WordPress is a huge project. It has been 
evolving over most of a decade now and many people have put many many 
hours of development into it.  Back when WordPress was first released, a 
person stood a fairly good chance of knowing and understanding the whole 
code base.  Now, if you don't live in the WordPress Core everyday, it's 
not a realistic goal for the typical person.

I'd recommend that you pick a specific area to study.  For example, you 
could familiarize yourself with WordPress's filters or actions.  Here 
are some suggestions:
http://codex.wordpress.org/Template_Tags
http://codex.wordpress.org/Plugin_API/Action_Reference
http://codex.wordpress.org/Options_API
MORE READING: http://codex.wordpress.org/WordPress_API's

If you want something more in depth,  you could trace through the code 
for displaying the home page or the general options page.  Those alone 
are a very interesting topics.   So start somewhere smaller than the 
whole code base. Once you understand that topic, move onto a related 
area of code.

Oh and the HitchHacker's Guide has some useful tools for looking up 
specific functions you come across along the way:
http://lookup.hitchhackerguide.com/*
http://hitchhackerguide.com/function-filter-action-index/

Hope that helps!

Brian Layman