So, you want to do some contribution for iPeer project. Just follow the following steps to make your own local development environment.

1. Get a GitHub Account from ​https://github.com.
2. Install Git on your local computer.
   • Mac: ​http://help.github.com/mac-set-up-git/
   • Linux: ​http://help.github.com/linux-set-up-git/
   • Windows: ​http://help.github.com/win-set-up-git/
3. Fork the iPeer project (​https://github.com/ubc/iPeer) into your account and clone the code from your forked repo: ​http://help.github.com/fork-a-repo/
4. Additional steps to set up
   • Pull the Guard plugin.

     cd ipeer
     git submodule init
     git submodule update
     

   • Ignore the updates in config/database.php

     git update-index --assume-unchanged config/database.php
     

5. Starting developing~
6. Once you finished, you can issue a pull request so that we can merge your changes to the iPeer repo. ​http://help.github.com/send-pull-requests/

See, that's not very hard.