BRL-CAD is huge.  With any large body of code, one inevitably ends up with a mix of good and bad coding practices.  On the whole, BRL-CAD is actually better than most but we are constantly working on improving the code.  This includes eliminating duplication.

References:

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don't_repeat_yourself
• http://brlcad.org/wiki/Code_Cleanup
• http://brlcad.org/wiki/Compiling
• http://brlcad.org/wiki/SVN

This task involves reducing BRL-CAD's source code by 100 or more lines of code by refactoring and eliminating duplicate code.  You can use whatever method you like to identify duplication, but beware that there are more than 1 million lines of code in BRL-CAD, so you're not likely going to find this duplication just by browsing.

We suggest using a code duplication detection tool like Simian.  See our Code_Cleanup page for details.

Download our latest Subversion trunk sources and make sure you can compile cleanly first.  Then you can run Simian or do whatever you need to find sources of code duplication.  Make your edits, then make sure the code still compiles (run "make", "make test", "make regress" and "make benchmark" to test your changes).  Finally, create and submit a patch file of your changes (see the references, svn will create the patch file for you).

Feel free to join the brlcad-devel mailing list or IRC channel to discuss your changes beforehand.