Here is a very simple modification you can make to your Blender source which will not hurt anything and give new coders a chance to try editing source files and recompiling, plus you’ll get visual feedback that your edits have worked.
Back when I was submitting bug reports I found it convenient to have the current revision number handy without having to bring up the splash screen, so I changed a few lines in Blender’s source to put the revision number up in the window title.
Here is the step-by-step process of making this modification:
1: Make sure you have your source code set up properly and that it compiles cleanly.
2: Navigate to the file: blender/source/blender/windowmanager/intern/wm_window.c and open it.
3: Scroll down to the section that says:
void wm_window_title(wmWindowManager *wm, wmWindow *win)
{
.....
4: Just inside of the wm_window_title() function add a line that says:
extern char build_rev[];
5: About 9 lines below that, there is a char array (i.e. a string) definition
" char str[sizeof(G.main->name) + 12];"
Chang it to read:
char str[sizeof(G.main->name) + 12 + 5];
This will give additional room to add the revision number to the window title.
6: Directly below that line is a line that begins “BLI_snprintf(str, sizeof(str),”. Change that line to read:
BLI_snprintf(str, sizeof(str), "%s Blender%s [%s]", build_rev, wm->file_saved ? "":"*", G.main->name);
Basically you are just prepending a '%s ’ to the quoted format string in that function call and then adding the ‘build_rev’ variable to the list of parameters. %s is a place holder for a string in the format string. In our case it will be the revision number.
7: In the ‘else’ clause that follows directly below, change the first two lines within it to be:
char str[14];
BLI_snprintf(str, sizeof(str), "%s Blender", build_rev);
Once again we’ve made room for the revision number by increasing the size of our string ‘str’ and changed the format string to accept our build_rev variable.
8: Save the file and recompile. If all goes well when you launch your newly compiled copy of Blender you will see the current revision number in your window title!
