New subject: [xwiki-dev] Re: XWiki Google Summer of Code 2007

27 Apr 2007

Hi Vandan,

On Apr 27, 2007, at 8:18 AM, Vandan Parikh wrote:

...
  Hello everyone,
 I'm glad to be part of the XWiki GSoC group. 
Glad to have you on board.

...
  However, I also had some other commitments and issues
for the past  
 few weeks.
 I'm planning to get acquainted with the code in the next week,  
 however I may also have to deal with a laptop transition. 
Make sure you read the docs on the Community space of xwiki.org.  
There are plenty of useful information there.

...
  What environment do most people develop with? (Windows
XP + Cygwin  
 + Eclipse?) 
For me: Mac OSX, IntelliJ IDEA
Ludovic: Windows XP, IntelliJ IDEA
Sergiu: Linux, IntelliJ IDEA
...

Note: We do have a free IntelliJ IDEA license for all development  
done on XWiki (you're not allowed to use it on any other dev than  
xwiki though). Let me know if you're interested and I'll send it to  
you. Same applies for other GSoC students of course.

...
  On 4/24/07, Vincent Massol < vincent(a)massol.net&gt;
wrote:
 Hi Everyone,

 As we already said we're all excited to work with you as part of the
 GSoC. However, in order for this to work, we all need to make some
 efforts. The biggest effort that we need to make is good
 communication (this is what is required when working on any open
 source project). We have extended an invitation to you in the email
 below with very clear guidelines and next steps to perform.

 Out of the 7 GSoC students, only 3 have answered so far: Tharindu,
 Evelina and Radu. I think answering to our email is really the least
 everyone could do... Let's hope it was simply an oversight or that
 you were on holidays... :-)

 Indeed your success will be very much based on how you interact with
 the XWiki open source project and on your availability to discuss,
 reply to mails, work collaboratively, in pure open source fashion.
 Thus, let's start to communicate:
 - introduce yourself
 - tell us what your plans are, when you'll be able to start working
 on what feature
 - start asking questions
 - tell us what you don't understand in the process, in the dev tools,
 in the build, etc
 - suggest ideas
 - help with the xwiki.org documentation
 - etc

 One task that we need all of you to perform is (as described below)
 to familiarize yourself with the XWiki development process and team.
 For doing this we suggested that each of you take a few JIRA issues
 and start implementing them (after reading the docs on the community
 space of xwiki.org). So far, we have Evelina, Tharindu and Radu who
 have picked some issues. Remember that this is an official step, part
 of the GSoC programme and that is goes from the 12th of April till
 the 28th of May. Of course if some of you cannot do it right now for
 any reason (like you're on holiday, you're too busy, etc) then of
 course you should communicate it (remember: communication is
 everything!). How could we know otherwise?

 What we would like is that you submit patches for a few JIRA issues.
 We'll review these patches, comment on them, till they are the level
 of quality adequate so that they can be committed. This is very
 important because you'll probably make mistakes along the way and
 this is where you'll learn. If you don't do this, chance is that it's
 going to be real hard thereafter to apply any of your work. You
 should really familiarize with XWiki before starting head-on with
 your projects. It'll be easier afterwards if you understand how XWiki
 development works first.

 One other useful task that you'll need to perform for sending patches
 is learning how to build XWiki. Try to build XWiki from sources, try
 to debug it from your IDE. These are useful skills you'll need for
 later on.

 Last, we would welcome feedback on what we've proposed here and
 below. This is a learning process for us too. We're very interested
 in any feedback, how to make this GSoc 2007 even better, and we need
 your input too.

 Let's start communicating on the XWiki mailing lists! :)

 Thanks
 -Vincent on behalf of the XWiki SOC mentor team

 On Apr 13, 2007, at 11:08 PM, Vincent Massol wrote:

  Hello XWiki Summer-of-Coders 2007,

 First of all, thank you for showing your interest in Open Source
 development, and for choosing XWiki as the project which will get
 you acquainted with this kind of development.

 [For all xwiki community members who don't know what the summer of
 code is, check XWiki's SOC page on http://www.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/
 view/GoogleSummerOfCode/]

 The goal of the Summer of Code program is to introduce young
 students like you in the fantastic world of Open Source. If you
 only view this as a better paid summer job, then you can't be any
 more wrong. Our mission, as your mentors, is to ease your
 understanding of how things work, to help you learn new things you
 won't be thought in school, to integrate you in a large and very
 friendly community, and to help you understand how a very large
 project is managed, planned, developed.

 Open Source is not only about the code. It is more about the
 Community that participates in the development of the code. We, the
 mentors, will do our best to introduce you in this community and
 make you enjoy being part of it, so that when the summer ends, and
 all your obligations as soc-ers cease to exist, you will want to
 continue being part of our community. The most successful example
 is that of Sergiu, who was a SoC student like you last year, and
 now is a mentor for two of the accepted projects.

 Your job is a bit more difficult. You have to catch up with
 hundreds of thousands of lines of code, learn about so many new
 technologies, get used to a whole new way of working on a project,
 get used to the many rules regarding project development that make
 it survive the competition and become famous, AND write a not-so-
 simple new component for XWiki. We know this is a difficult task to
 achieve in less than 4 months, especially on your own, so we are
 willing to offer any help we can provide.

 So, let's get started.

 1. We need to know what your main email address is (the one you
 check more often), so that we can reach you faster when needed.

 2. We need to establish some rules regarding how you will interact
 with the mentors and the community, and how you will develop your
 code.

 First and foremost, working on XWiki needs to be fun and a good
 learning process! However the XWiki project is already following
 some development rules that we're asking SoC students to follow
 too. This is for the good of the XWiki project but more importantly
 it's a good way to learn how an open source community works and if
 these practices are followed then it'll be much easier to integrate
 the SoC student work into XWiki's official releases.

 So here are some practices we'd like SoC students to follow (please
 comment on the list if you'd like to change some of them or propose
 other things):

 * SoC students should be considered like any XWiki contributor
 which means they should respect the same rules and which means they
 are not committers on XWiki core. Note that a SoC student can
 become a Committer in the same manner a contributor can become one.
 * SoC students will be given commit access to the sandbox only,
 where they'll create their project (one top level directory for
 each project). For projects which need to modify some existing
 code, JIRA issues will need to be created and patches attached.
 It's important that patches be of good quality and small in order
 to be applied quickly. Once sandbox projects reach a good level of
 maturity (meaning they work and the code is of code quality,
 documented, etc) then we'd like to migrate them to the main release
 tree.
 * SoC students should obey all Community rules. For example this
 means:
       o using the XWiki coding conventions
       o using the defined communication channels: IRC and mailing    list
  * SoC students have time allocated to familiarize
with XWiki
 development process. As such we'd like each SoC student to pick one
 or several existing issues in JIRA and send a patch that fixes it/
 them before that period ends (from 12th of April to 28th of May)
 This is a critical integration step to ensure all SoC students
 understand how XWiki works and it's a chance to start asking
 questions and get to know each other.
 * SoC student should post a quick introduction on the xwiki dev
 mailing list to explain who they are and what they're going to work
 on.
 * SoC student should always go to the list when communicating about
 their project. They should use the XWiki IRC channel if they need
 to talk to their mentors. The goal is that everyone in the XWiki
 community help them, answer their questions, but also know what
 they are doing. This will make patch applications and integration
 of their work back into XWiki trunk easier later on. This is very
 important and a criteria of success for the student. This is about
 learning how open source works. Note that students can also CC
 their mentor's email address if they want, but the mails have to go
 to the XWiki dev list.
 * SoC students should not block on anything for a long period of
 time. They should ask plenty of questions on the list (but they
 should also be autonomous!)

 These practices are also listed on http://www.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/
 view/GoogleSummerOfCode/

 3. Here's what you need to do to get you started:

 a) You need to register on http://forge.objectweb.org/account/
 register.php
 ObjectWeb (or the OW2 Consortium, as it is known now) is an Open
 Source software community, and XWiki is one of the many projects
 belonging to this large "family". Mainly, it offers the same
 facilities Sourceforge offers. This is where the source code is
 hosted, and where the official mailing lists are hosted.
 You have to remember the username and password, because later you
 will use them for commiting code.

 b) You should subscribe to some of the mailing lists on http://
 forge.objectweb.org/mail/?group_id=170 . We recommend that you
 subscribe at least to xwiki-dev and xwiki-users.

 c) You need to register on http://jira.xwiki.org/jira/secure/Signup!
 default.jspa
 This is where the code management takes place. It is a repository
 of known bugs, issues, planned new features or improvements. It
 also offers some statistics and roadmaps regarding the project
 evolution. Getting accustomed to using JIRA is a requirement.

 d) Download the XWiki source code. Follow the instructions on
 http://www.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Community/SourceRepository
 For the moment, you can only checkout the code using anonymous    access.

 e) It will be very hard to understand the code by reverse
 engineering. We know that the documentation is not our strong point
 (on the contrary), but reading the guides on http://www.xwiki.org/
 xwiki/bin/view/Main/Documentation will help a lot.

 f) Try to follow the discussions on JIRA and on the mailing lists.

 We do know that you still have classes and exams, and we definitely
 don't want you to disregard school, so take things easy, and don't
 panic if something seems too difficult. Don't be shy, Open Source
 communities are about communications and help.

 Good luck,

 -The XWiki SOC mentor team (Sergiu, Jeremi, Ludovic, Jean-Vincent,
 Vincent)