Preparation for GSoC 2016

[Ryan Schmidt]

On May 7, 2015, at 1:16 AM, Pulkit Kumar wrote:

> Hello Everyone
> 
> My name is Pulkit Kumar and currently i am a 2nd year undergraduate student of B.E in Information Technology at Netaji Subhas Institute of Technology (NSIT), University of Delhi, India.
> 
> I am very keen in contributing to open source technology as much as i can, so I had planned to contribute to macports through this years GSoC and joined all the mailing lists too. But i really got confused as to how exactly should i go about it and also due to some personal matters i couldn't apply for GSoC'15. So i really want to apply next year @ GSoC'16 under macports. So can anyone one of you please guide/ tell me as to what all I can do from this stage itself so that I am well prepared for next year and also if at all can i still contribute to macports by not being part of GSoC?
> 
> My current tech knowledge:- C++, C, Python, Objective C, Swift

Hello,

Thanks for wanting to help! I think it would be wonderful for you to become more familiar with MacPorts well before the start of GSoC '16, so that by the time GSoC '16 comes around, you'll already know your way around.

Most MacPorts contributors start by updating existing Portfiles, and then move on to submitting new Portfiles. If there is software that interests you, you can focus on Portfiles for that software. Don't forget to check the issue tracker to see if tickets and possibly patches already exist.

Or you can look through the issue tracker for tickets that need resolving. For example, if someone submits an update ticket, but has not attached a patch, you could update the port on your system, verify it builds, then provide a patch. Or if someone reports a build failure in some port, you could try to reproduce it and fix it, and supply a patch.

If your interest is in improving MacPorts base code, then familiarity with that code will help. Just start reading the code. If there is a particular aspect of MacPorts that interests you, investigate how that code works. For example, if you think MacPorts logging needs to be improved, try to find and understand the code that relates to how the logs are currently being created.

If you need ideas for things to work on, beyond what's in the issue tracker, the list of GSoC project ideas is still a good place to look. If you have an idea for something you want to work on but you're not sure if you're approaching the problem in the right way or if the changes you're considering would be welcomed by the community, you can ask for guidance on this mailing list.