Thank you for the congratulations Savitha, likewise; Sasinda as well. I can't wait to see what the program will produce! Like Savitha, I just wanted to thank everyone involved at XWIKI--especially Evalica, Sdumitriu, Vmassol. Jumping into the pool looks that much easier. Hopefully I will be able to implement a Responsive Web Design skin (a webdesign layout that changes in context of screen size), with XWIKI's help, that everyone can be proud of and match the high standards of XWIKI. If anyone has any input on what they would like to see, definitely feel free to let me know.
Thank you all, and best regards, Jonathan Solichin On Mon, Apr 23, 2012 at 12:49 PM, Eduard Moraru <[email protected]>wrote: > Hello community, Hello Google Summer of Code students, > > First of all, congratulations on your applications and your activity > during the selection period, and welcome in the XWiki development team. > > Before guiding the accepted students to their next steps, we'd like to > thank again all those who showed interest in XWiki for this Summer of Code. > We had a lot of good applications this year, with professional approaches > and interesting ideas, and it was very difficult to choose only 3. > Unfortunately, some very good students, with great potential, were not > accepted. So, to those interested in getting involved anyway, without > Google's implication, I renew the invitation to put your ideas in practice > under the guidance of the community. Even though the money will be missing, > you can still take advantage of the other GSoC benefits: learning new > things, gaining experience, earning recognition, etc [1]. If you would like > to do that, please let us know by replying to this mail. > > For the accepted students, here are some getting started hints: > > = Community bonding period = > > According to the program timeline [2], the next month (until - May 21st) > is to be used for community bonding. > > The first thing to do, sometime this week, is to present yourself and your > project on the dev list, so that everyone knows who you are and > what to expect from you (a precondition is to be subscribed to the list, > which you *need to do ASAP* if you haven't already). > > Also, you should continue getting acquainted with the code, the practices > and the developers. Please make sure you all read and understand the > following - very useful - documents: > - [3] http://purl.org/xwiki/community/ > - [4] http://purl.org/xwiki/dev/ > - [5] http://platform.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Features/ > > = Mentorship = > > We prefer open mentorship. While your assigned mentor is the one > officially in charge with your guidance, almost all interaction should be > done 'in the open' as much as possible, on the IRC channel or on the > mailing list. You should choose the communication medium according to the > importance of the matters to be discussed: naturally, the less important > issues are to be discussed on IRC, while the design decisions, important > progress announcements and testing/feedback requests go on the list. This > way, the community is informed on the evolution of your project, and other > developers can come up any time with useful ideas and suggestions. > Moreover, if your mentor is hit by a bus (the bus factor [6]), another > developer can take his place with little effort. > > = Communication = > > Sitting alone in your room, working secretly on your project is definitely > a bad approach. However, please keep in mind that too much communication > can also be harmful, as it distracts the others from their own work. You > need to be able to communicate just right: > - provide meaningful information about your progress, > - ask the community's opinion on non-trivial design or implementation > decisions > - avoid wasting a lot of time on a problem, when a more experienced > developer (or a student that fought the same problem) could quickly provide > you an answer; however, do try to find the answer yourself at first. > > Wrong: "Where do I start? What do I do now? And how do I do that? Is this > good? It doesn't work, help me!" > > Right: "Since a couple of hours ago I get a strange exception when > building my project, and googling for a solution doesn't seem to help. > Looking at the error, I think that there's a wrong setting for the assembly > plugin, but nothing I tried works. Can someone please take a look?" > > Subscribe to the devs list (if you didn't do this already), and start > monitoring the discussions. It is also recommended to subscribe to the > users list, but not mandatory. The notifications list is a little too high > volume and technical for the moment, but it is a great knowledge > source. > > = Development process = > > The project's lifecycle is NOT design -> implementation -> testing -> > documentation. [7] > > We invite you to adopt a test driven development [8][9][10] approach and > to experience agile development [11]. After the first coding week, you must > have some code that works. It won't do much, of course, but it will be the > seed of your project. Every functionality will be validated by tests. The > code must be properly tested and commented at the time of the writing > (don't think you'll do that afterwards, because in most cases you won't). > > Since our code is now hosted on GitHub [12], you should register an > account there and fork some xwiki repositories, so that you can try to > build XWiki from sources, and be able to contribute bugfixes. We'll add you > to the xwiki-contrib organization [13], and we'll create dedicated > repositories for each project. We encourage you to do __at least__ weekly > commits (ideally, if you are well organized, you should be able to commit > code that works daily, so try to aim at daily commits). This way, the code > can be properly reviewed, and any problems can be detected before they grow > into something too difficult to fix. One big code blob committed at the > end, no matter how good it may seem, is a failure at several levels. > > A simple way of having something functional in the first week is to > prepare the maven build for your modules, which will give you the first > unit test for the first class. > > = Next steps, in a nutshell = > > - Get more familiar with the code and development process and try to > master Maven, JUnit, Selenium, component driven development, ... > - Continue fixing a few small issues, chosen so that they are __related to > your project__. You can ask on IRC for help selecting good issues, or you > can pick from the (non-comprehensive) list of easy issues [14] > -- This will help you get more familiar with the code your project needs > to interact with. > - Refine and organize the ideas concerning your project (you can use the > Drafts space [15]), and write several use case scenarios. > - Start writing the first piece of code for your project. > > At the end of the community bonding period, you should have a clear vision > of the project, well documented on the xwiki.org wiki, you should have > the build infrastructure ready, and you should be pretty familiar with the > existing code you will need to interact with. And, of course, you should be > familiar with the community and the way we communicate. > > Good luck, and may we all have a great Summer of Code! > > -The XWiki Development Team > > ---------- > [1] http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/cathedral-bazaar/homesteading/ > [2] http://www.google-melange.com/gsoc/events/google/gsoc2012 > [3] http://purl.org/xwiki/community/ > [4] http://purl.org/xwiki/dev/ > [5] http://platform.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Features/ > [6] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bus_factor > [7] http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/cathedral-bazaar/cathedral-bazaar/ > [8] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Test-driven_development > [9] http://www.amazon.com/dp/0321146530/ > [10] http://www.amazon.com/dp/0201485672/ > [11] http://www.amazon.com/dp/0596527675/ > [12] https://github.com/xwiki/ > [13] https://github.com/xwiki-contrib/ > [14] > http://jira.xwiki.org/jira/secure/IssueNavigator.jspa?mode=hide&requestId=10510 > [15] http://dev.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Drafts/ _______________________________________________ devs mailing list [email protected] http://lists.xwiki.org/mailman/listinfo/devs
