[gentoo-soc] Welcome, GSoC students!

[Donnie Berkholz]

Welcome to Gentoo’s edition of the Google Summer of Code! We hope you’ve 
been in touch with your mentor and are already comfortable with the 
tools you need, so you're writing code today rather than doing setup 
work.

The rest of this email contains general information to help you be more 
productive this summer; please read it completely and carefully so you 
don’t miss anything critical.

This year, you’ll be working on 1 of 9 projects 
<http://www.google-melange.com/gsoc/org/google/gsoc2012/gentoo>. We’re 
really excited about working with all of you this summer!


Communication
=============

It is *very important* that you are in constant touch with your mentor 
throughout the duration of the program; poor communication is one of the 
most frequent causes of failure. There are several channels of 
communication that Gentoo developers use, and we’ll go through the most 
important of them:

Mailing Lists
-------------
gentoo-dev is the list where technical discussions related to Gentoo but 
not suited for more specific lists takes place. We highly recommend you 
subscribe to this list and lurk for a while to get a feel of what kind 
of questions are asked on it.

You should already be subscribed to the gentoo-soc mailing list, where 
you will receive important announcements related to the program. In 
addition to these two lists, your mentor might also want you to 
subscribe to another list, depending on your project. A complete listing 
of all our mailing lists, along with information on how you can 
subscribe to them is available on: 
http://www.gentoo.org/main/en/lists.xml

The primary language of communication on most of our lists is English, 
but many of us are not native English speakers, so don’t be ashamed of 
writing “bad English” although SMS text language is typically frowned 
upon (“u” instead of “you” for example). It is usually sufficient if you 
are able to communicate your idea and everyone understands what you are 
trying to say. Also, don’t be afraid of asking “stupid questions” — many 
of you are new to the world of open-source software, and we know that. 
We’re here to help.

When starting a new thread on a mailing list, send a new email to the 
list — don’t reply to an existing thread. Also, you are expected to send 
plain-text email, no HTML! Learn how to quote relevant portions when 
replying to a thread. This web page might help: 
http://www.netmeister.org/news/learn2quote.html

IRC
---
Most Gentoo developers hang out in several channels on the Freenode IRC 
channel. IRC is generally used for real-time conversations and is very 
useful when you want a quick reply. The starting point for you should be 
the #gentoo-soc channel; your mentor will tell you which other channels 
you are recommended to join. If you are new to IRC, this might help: 
http://www.irchelp.org/irchelp/irctutorial.html

IRC is a highly informal environment, and we don’t recommend you make 
important decisions there unless you’ve scheduled a meeting with your 
mentor to discuss them. Even if you do, we recommend you archive that 
decision by other means (a post to a list, blog post) since most IRC 
channels are not logged. Also, some developers don’t use IRC at all but 
they may have something valuable to say.

You should be available on IRC during your regular working hours.

Bugzilla
--------
Gentoo maintains a bug database at http://bugs.gentoo.org/ and you 
should sign up for an account there. Depending on your project, your 
mentor may expect you to file bugs and follow them. Whenever your 
project involves changes to code maintained by existing Gentoo 
developers, you will usually have to file a bug and follow it up. Your 
mentor will tell you whether or not you will be using Bugzilla, and if 
so, to what extent.

Blogs
-----
Many developers use blogs to communicate with the community at large. We 
highly recommend, but do not require, that you read posts on Planet 
Gentoo (http://planet.gentoo.org/) and add the feed to your reader. We 
also highly recommend that you get a blog for yourself (if you don’t 
already have one), and use it to write anything relevant to your project 
under a category such as “gsoc2011” or “gentoo.” We will aggregate your 
blogs on our Planet for the entire Gentoo community to read.


Code Management
===============

Gentoo uses a mix of Git, SVN, and CVS internally. We expect you to 
maintain a repository containing your code on Gentoo infrastructure, 
unless you're working on an existing project that's already hosted 
elsewhere.

Robin Johnson (robbat2@g.o) has already sent out details to your 
mentors about getting repositories set up, so we don't need to go into 
that here. Contact your mentor if you need more details.


Project Websites
================

You must have a centralized, permanent location for information about 
you and your project that is hosted by Gentoo (unless you're working on 
an existing project hosted elsewhere). If you're working on an 
established codebase like Portage or Porthole, you can just use its 
existing infrastructure. Otherwise, Trac is an ideal way to fulfill this 
requirement.

We are happy to set up Trac instances for your project, so it has an
online home where people can go to learn more about it. This will
provide you with a homepage, a wiki, a timeline, and possibly
integration with your source code.

To have Trac set up, contact Robin Johnson (robbat2@g.o) with
details about your project. The Trac instance should have the same name
as your repository, if possible. Discuss with your mentor whether Trac
is something you need.


Shell Access
============

As a GSoC student with Gentoo, you get access to one of our shell 
servers. This is an ideal place to run an IRC client like irssi coupled 
with screen, so that you are always available on IRC and can reconnect 
from anywhere. Talk to your mentor about this, if you aren't already set 
up.


Progress Reports
================

We expect progress reports from each of you at least once a week. Feel 
free to report more often! At the top, provide a brief summary of your 
project to remind anyone who hasn’t followed it closely and tell us 
whether it's on schedule, ahead of schedule, or behind schedule. Then 
tell us about your accomplishments, your problems, how you solved them, 
and your plans for the next week.

Your mentors will tell you their preferred method of communication, but 
you must also post your weekly progress reports to the gentoo-soc 
mailing list. Make sure that you inform your mentor well in advance if 
you plan to be missing for a week or more (vacation, exams etc.). We 
understand that you have a student life to attend to in parallel, but if 
you are missing for more than a week without reason, we will be forced 
to disqualify you from the program.

Gentoo's GSoC admins will also require very short, occasional surveys to 
help us ensure you have a great time this summer.


Questions
=========

Your mentor is the primary contact for any questions pertaining to the 
program, technical or not. However, it is possible that a mentor may be 
unreachable for sometime due to personal reasons or otherwise. It is 
*extremely* important that you immediately notify an organization 
administrator in the event that your mentor is unavailable for more than 
3 days. The administrator will immediately look into the issue and 
assign a new mentor, if required. Since all of us are from various 
cultures around the world, it is also possible that you and your mentor 
may not “get along” very well. Please do contact our organization 
administrators to discuss any such issues:

    Primary admin: Donnie Berkholz <dberkholz@g.o>
    Backup admin: Leslie Hawthorn <lh@g.o>

As a final note, we want to remind you that this is the Summer of Code, 
and not the Summer of Project Research And Design or the Summer of 
Learning Your Programming Language And Tools. You should already have 
completed all the background work, so you can spend the whole summer 
writing code.

We’re looking forward to a great summer with all of you, and we hope 
that all your projects are successful. Please don’t hesitate to use any 
of the mentioned communication channels if you have a question or doubt.

Have a great summer!

--
Thanks,
Donnie

Donnie Berkholz
Admin, Summer of Code
Gentoo Linux
Blog: http://dberkholz.com