Introduction

[Clemens Lang]

Hi Jackson,

----- On 3 Mar, 2015, at 11:31, Jackson Isaac jacksonisaac2008 at gmail.com wrote:

> I am interested in contributing to MacPorts project and also would like to apply
> for GSoC '15 with MacPorts organization. I have been using MacPorts from past
> year now and I would like to take this opportunity to contribute my skills and
> knowledge towards this project that I regularly use for installing open source
> packages.

Great! We're always happy to see new GSoC students :)


> I am familiar with programming languages like C, C++, Java, Python; version
> control systems - Git, Mercurial and also familiar with open source projects,
> creating patches and have contributed to projects like GNOME, Mozilla and
> Mediawiki.

That's nice, make sure to mention that in your application. Note that while MacPorts
uses a little bit of C way down in its internals, the major part is written in Tcl,
which is not quite as popular a choice of scripting language as it used to be back
when MacPorts was founded.

That means you might want to get yourself familiar with Tcl early on. Don't worry,
it's not very difficult, especially if you already know a scripting language. I'd
recommend walking through
  http://www.tcl.tk/man/tcl8.5/tutorial/tcltutorial.html
to get started.


> It would be grateful if someone can guide me on the right path and so I can give
> my best towards working on the project. I am willing to read materials to gain
> more knowledge about the technologies used in the project.

You've probably already seen our ideas page at
  https://trac.macports.org/wiki/SummerOfCode.
It has a section titled "What you should do before handing in an application" with
a few first steps.

After you've done that, take a look at the ideas we've listed on the wiki page.
Those are just to give you a rough idea of what can be done. If you have an idea of
your own on where MacPorts can be improved, don't hesitate to bring it up here, so
we can discuss it. If you don't have your own idea at the moment, just read through
the ideas list and see if any of the tasks might suit you. Feel free to ask here
on the list, in IRC, or email the potential maintainers directly for more
information.

If the list doesn't have anything for you, there's more of them somewhere in my
Inbox, which I could dig up if needed.


And don't forget: If something is unclear, please ask :)


Looking forward to a great summer!
-- 
Clemens Lang