[GSoC] I'm interested in participating and need some guides

[Chunyang Xu]

Hi,

On Thu, Mar 19, 2015 at 5:37 AM, Clemens Lang <cal at macports.org> wrote:
> Hi,
>
>
> ----- On 11 Mar, 2015, at 19:34, Chunyang Xu xuchunyang56 at gmail.com wrote:
>
>> I have some knowledge in C and Emacs Lisp, I teach myself how to
>> programming. I have my personal open source projects hosting on Github
>> (see https://github.com/xuchunyang if you are interested). I've been a
>> Mac OS X user about one year, before that, I'd used GNU/Linux for more
>> than two years, I also worked for GNOME as a GSoC student last year.
>
> That sounds like you would need to brush up on your Tcl knowledge, because
> most of MacPorts (and certainly the parts you're interested in) are written
> in Tcl. See
>   https://trac.macports.org/wiki/SummerOfCode#Whatyoushoulddobeforehandinginanapplication
> for a few first steps and make sure to go through the Tcl tutorial at
>   http://www.tcl.tk/man/tcl8.5/tutorial/tcltutorial.html
>

Thanks for your reminder. I've read through that MacPorts GSoC wiki page
and Tcl tutorial.

https://trac.macports.org/ looks down from here, it's not just me according
to http://www.downforeveryoneorjustme.com/trac.macports.org

>> My English is also limited because I don't have any chance to use it
>> execpt while I'm programming, but reading and writing basic English is
>> fine.
>
> Looks fine for written communication to me.
>
>
>> I've already get start on preparing several days ago. For now, I've
>> installed MacPorts from svn sources and read some svn and Tcl
>> tutorials. But I am not sure if I am too late to prepare, am I?
>
> No, you're not too late. Sorry about the delay in replying by the way,
> most of us have day jobs as well.
>
>
>> Currently, I am interested in two potential ideas:
>> 1. Improve fetching from version control
>> 2. Improve startupitem code
>
> I think there's a ticket for the first one somewhere in our bugtracker
> with a couple of ideas. I don't have the link handy, but maybe somebody
> else on the list has?
>
> For the startupitem code, you would probably begin by throwing out the
> support for pre-launchd boot systems we still have and do a little
> cleanup before implementing new features. You should read up on launchd
> plists and their features and think about which features might be useful
> to have easily accessible in MacPorts.
>
>
>> It's clear for me what purpose they want to achieve just according to
>> their title and description, even I haven't yet have a detailed
>> understanding of these two ideas.
>>
>> I plan to learn more about them during my free time. I want to let you
>> guys know my situation and I will be very gald if anyone can give soem
>> suggestion for me to get familir with MacPorts's codebase quickly, for
>> example, where to find some bugs which are easy to fix for beginner.
>
> For the startupitem code, look at base/src/port1.0/portstartupitem.tcl.
> You can find more tickets to fix in our bug tracker at
>   http://trac.macports.org/query?status=assigned&status=new&status=reopened&component=base&col=id&col=summary&col=status&col=type&col=priority&col=milestone&col=component&desc=1&order=id
> Not all of those are easy to fix, but there are certainly a few that
> should be pretty simple, e.g. #46956 or #46733.
>

I will look at them. Thank you.

--
Chunyang

> Let me know if you have further questions.
>
>
> --
> Clemens Lang