From Mandriva Community Wiki

Due to using a bunch of specific software components, techniques and programming languages, "diving in" Mandriva specific software components (DrakX, urpmi, Mandriva Linux Control Center, etc) is not blatantly obvious. Here is a good starting point, if you want to fix bugs or contribute features to Mandriva software components.

[edit] Perl programs

Most Perl programs (DrakX, urpmi, rpmdrake, Mandriva Linux Control Center, etc) use Mandriva Perl libraries:

• perl-MDK-Common: is a set of generic library functions aimed at producing better code (shorter, more readable, more functional)

• ugtk2.pm: is a set of functions allowing more object-style and functional gtk2-interface code

• interactive.pm: is a powerful GUI abstraction layer allowing to write programs that can run with a GTK interface, a newt interface or an stdio interface.

[edit] DrakX

DrakX is the Mandriva Linux installation program. It's written in Perl. A good starting point is the HACKING doc file.

You can also read the Mandriva Installer Howto