Best/efficient development workflow?

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2 ideas here:

1: divide & conquer

if it's just a single small function, extract it from the library code into your test.cpp, hack it into submission there and only then put it back into the library code, if you're lucky, you only need a single pass of 3. then.

2: build only what you need for your change

don't rebuild the whole world ;)

in fact, disable the world module, and use a whitelist of only the nessecary modules, like

cmake -DBUILD_LIST=core,imgproc,imgcodecs

(a list of comma-seperated module names sans the "opencv_" prefix, builds in a few miutes here, like this ...)

this will also disable python/java bindings

sidenotes

• they'll probably ask you to add a unit test for your changes, so getting somewhat familiar with google's test framework might be a good idea.
• the github wiki has some nice info, e.g. here and here
• gl, and no fear, devs there are very noob friendly / encouraging ;)
• usually, there's a step 9. -- ppl will request changes, add those, squash commits (the fun part, vi.. !!) git rebase -i HEAD~2 and force-push again ;)
• scan current issues/pr's e.g. like this: https://github.com/opencv/opencv/issu... , it will give you a good feel for how discussions there go, who's working on what and other ppl's workflows.