BOINC's architecture is 'open'; documented interfaces making it possible to develop various types of applications and web sites that interact with BOINC's core components. Examples include: "; list_start(); list_item("Client GUIs", "These allow an application to control a local or remove core client." ); list_item("Credit statistics web sites", "Daily feeds of statistics data from BOINC projects let you create web sites showing leaderboards." ); list_item("Account managers", "These interfaces support web sites that let BOINC users manage their accounts." ); list_item("Server status web sites", "These interfaces support web sites showing the server status of BOINC projects." ); list_item("Web RPCs", "These interfaces let a program or web site obtain information about users and hosts from projects." ); list_item("Local editing of preferences", "This mechanism lets you write a program local editing of preferences." ); list_end(); echo "

An index of add-on software is maintained by Janus Kristensen. If you write something useful, publicize it by adding it to the index.

Developing BOINC itself

• Personnel and contributors
• Development information flow
• The BOINCzilla bug database.
• boinc_dev, an email list for BOINC developers.
• Get and compile BOINC software
• Implementation notes
• BOINC coding style

BOINC is free software, distributed under the Lesser GNU Public License (LGPL). We are in constant need of volunteers to help with software testing and development. If you have one or more of the relevant technical skills (C++ system programming, PHP/MySQL web development, WxWidgets programming, autoconf/automake expertise, etc.) you may be able to help us maintain and enhance BOINC. The University of California holds the copyright on all BOINC source code; by contributing code to BOINC you implicitly assign the copyright to the University of California. In any case, you are welcome to browse the source code and give us feedback. You should understand how BOINC works (for both participants and projects) before getting into the source code.

To get started, look at the BOINC bug database, fix a bug or two, and send your patches to the appropriate area owner. The following medium-to-large development projects are available:

• Applications
  • Write an example compound application (and suggest API revisions to make this easier).
• Core client:
  • Rewrite the CPU scheduler and work fetch policies to match the design document (John McLeod is working on this).
  • After the above is done, write a simulator for the CPU scheduler and work fetch policies.
  • Log result start/ends (for use by 3rd-party software like BoincView).
  • Prevent disk space usage from exceeding user preferences, and enforce resource shares, with file deletion according to project policy.
• BOINC Manager:
  Change the Statistics tab to use a single graph with lines of different colors or styles for different projects.
  • Show progress bars for file transfers and in-progress results.
  • Show pie charts for disk usage
  • Sortable columns in Work tab.