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+.. _codebase-chapter:
+
+========================
+ Codebase Documentation
+========================
+
+.. contents:: Sections
+   :local:
+
+
+This chapter covers the libraries that GNU MediaGoblin uses as well as
+various recipes for getting things done.
+
+.. Note::
+
+   This chapter is in flux.  Clearly there are things here that aren't
+   documented.  If there's something you have questions about, please
+   ask!
+
+   See `the join page on the website <http://mediagoblin.org/join/>`_
+   for where we hang out.
+
+For more information on how to get started hacking on GNU MediaGoblin,
+see :ref:`hacking-howto`.
+
+
+Software Stack
+==============
+
+* Project infrastructure
+
+  * `Python <http://python.org/>`_: the language we're using to write
+    this
+
+  * `Nose <http://somethingaboutorange.com/mrl/projects/nose/>`_:
+    for unit tests
+
+  * `buildout <http://www.buildout.org/>`_: for getting dependencies,
+    building a runtime environment, ...
+
+* Data storage
+
+  * `MongoDB <http://www.mongodb.org/>`_: the document database backend
+    for storage
+
+* Web application
+
+  * `Paste Deploy <http://pythonpaste.org/deploy/>`_ and 
+    `Paste Script <http://pythonpaste.org/script/>`_: we'll use this for
+    configuring and launching the application
+
+  * `WebOb <http://pythonpaste.org/webob/>`_: nice abstraction layer
+    from HTTP requests, responses and WSGI bits
+
+  * `Routes <http://routes.groovie.org/>`_: for URL routing
+
+  * `Beaker <http://beaker.groovie.org/>`_: for handling sessions
+
+  * `Jinja2 <http://jinja.pocoo.org/docs/>`_: the templating engine
+
+  * `MongoKit <http://namlook.github.com/mongokit/>`_: the lightweight
+    ORM for MongoDB we're using which will make it easier to define
+    structures and all that
+
+  * `WTForms <http://wtforms.simplecodes.com/>`_: for handling,
+    validation, and abstraction from HTML forms
+
+  * `Celery <http://celeryproject.org/>`_: for task queuing (resizing
+    images, encoding video, ...)
+
+  * `RabbitMQ <http://www.rabbitmq.com/>`_: for sending tasks to celery
+
+* Front end
+
+  * `JQuery <http://jquery.com/>`_: for groovy JavaScript things
+
+
+
+What's where
+============
+
+After you've run buildout, you're faced with the following directory
+tree::
+
+    mediagoblin/
+    |- mediagoblin/              #source code
+    |  |- tests/
+    |  |- templates/
+    |  |- auth/
+    |  \- submit/
+    |- docs/                     #documentation
+    |
+    |        #the below directories are generated by
+    |        #buildout.
+    |
+    |- bin/                      #scripts
+    |- develop-eggs/
+    |- eggs/
+    |- mediagoblin.egg-info/
+    |- parts/
+    |- user_dev/                 #sessions, etc
+
+
+As you can see, all the code for GNU MediaGoblin is in the
+``mediagoblin`` directory.
+
+Here are some interesting files and what they do:
+
+:routing.py: maps url paths to views
+:views.py:   views handle http requests
+:models.py:  holds the mongodb schemas---these are the data structures 
+             we're working with
+
+You'll notice that there are several sub-directories: tests,
+templates, auth, submit, ...
+
+``tests`` holds the unit test code.
+
+``templates`` holds all the templates for the output.
+
+``auth`` and ``submit`` are modules that enacpsulate authentication
+and media item submission.  If you look in these directories, you'll
+see they have their own ``routing.py``, ``view.py``, and
+``models.py`` in addition to some other code.
+
+
+Recipes
+=======
+
+FIXME - write this