Google are running their Summer of Code again this year. If you're not
familiar with it, see:
https://summerofcode.withgoogle.com/
Interested orgs can apply already up until February 19th (a little over a
two weeks away as I write).
We've taken part many times before, and it's resulted in both new
contributors and interesting new features - I think it's well worth
considering applying again.
There are two "howevers" though:
* The first is that I'm personally very lacking in spare time currently.
I should have more time by the time we get to the GSoC coding period,
but talking to potential applicants, helping them get up to speed, and
reviewing their patches and proposals are all important parts of a
successful GSoC.
* The other is that Google have reduced the project length this year:
"The GSoC 2021 program is 10 weeks long and students are expected to
spend on average 18 hours a week on the program" or "~175
hours"
depending what you read. Previously it was 13 weeks "full-time",
which we took as ~40 hours/week, so the project scope is significantly
reduced. Once you factor in that students generally get more
productive with experience we probably need to reduce the scope of
projects to perhaps 25-30% of what was realistic before.
I think there are pros and cons to the reduced length, but it does
mean we need to update our GSoC material on the wiki. We need to
check for references to the old project length and update those, and
also overhaul the ideas list (usually most ideas that didn't get
picked are carried over with maybe a minor tweak or two). A few new
ideas would be good too, especially if there are existing ideas we
can't cut down to a useful smaller project:
https://trac.xapian.org/wiki/GSoCProjectIdeas
So I think we need some fresh recruits for our GSoC org admin team.
James and I can provide some support, but I think ideally you'd have
been through GSoC as a mentor or student in a previous year.
We also need to find out who's up for mentoring this year, as we need to
make sure there's someone up for mentoring projects we have on our list,
and we also need to give a rough idea of how many potential mentors we
have on the org application.
You certainly don't need to understand all of Xapian in detail to
usefully mentor - any questions you can't answer can be directed to
others, and a lot of it is helping students with learning more generic
skills - for example what a good commit looks like, automated testing,
etc.
If you're interested in admining or mentoring, please talk to James
Aylett or me. I'd particularly encourage previous GSoC students to
consider it as it's a great way to get more involved, and having already
been through the program from the other side is very helpful. It's a
good way to expand your involvement with the project.
We also need to refresh the list of project ideas. James has done some
initial clean up, but ideally we need a few new ideas for projects.
The better the breadth and depth of ideas we have, the more likely we
are to be selected:
If you are a student eligible for GSoC and interested in working on
Xapian, please feel free to get in touch. You don't have to choose from
the ideas on the list - you're welcome to propose your own project
ideas.
If you want to discuss being a mentor or a student, or a project idea,
you can do so on the mailing list or on #xapian on freenode or matrix
(if you aren't already an IRC or matrix user, see
https://trac.xapian.org/wiki/GSoC_IRC for details of how to connect).
There's also a general GSoC IRC channel - #gsoc on freenode.
Cheers,
Olly