[gentoo-soc] Welcome GSoC Students!

[Anant Narayanan]

Welcome to Gentoo's edition of the Google Summer of Code, and  
congratulations on your selection! To get you started, here's some  
general information. This email should be followed by another email  
from your mentor giving you more specific details. This year, you'll  
be working on 1 of 6 projects:

Using Gentoo, Seed Linux and Catalyst to provide easy access to a  
Beowulf Clustering/HPC environment to everyday users
	by Eric Thibodeau
	mentored by Donnie Berkholz (dberkholz@g.o)
Eric and Donnie are going to be working on making the process of  
creating and maintaining Beowulf clustering solutions based on Gentoo  
easier for end-users and system administrators. This will ultimately  
help in building machines for applications such as high performance  
and scientific computing.

Automate it All
	by Nirbheek Chauhan
	mentored by Stephen Anthony Klimaszewski (steev@g.o)
Nirbheek is going to create a new web application that would enable  
Gentoo developers to utilize remote machines for queuing "jobs", where  
"jobs" are simply a sequence of steps that can be defined by the  
developers. The results will then be sent back to them when they are  
completed. Some of the use cases for such a system are: checking for  
breakage on new versions of a package, verifying dependencies of a  
package and arch testing.

Implement OpenPAM compatible modules for Linux
	by Serafeim Mellos
	mentored by Diego Pettenò (flameeyes@g.o)
Serafeim is going to write a set of PAM modules (specifically  
pam_unix, pam_securetty, pam_shells, pam_wheel, pam_nologin and  
others, if time permits) using the OpenPAM library. This would enable  
users to choose between OpenPAM and the existing Linux-PAM  
implementations and offer greater flexibility, in the true spirit of  
Gentoo.

GNAP Love (embedded framework enhancements)
	by Vít Vomáčko
	mentored by Andrey Falko (andrey@××××××.net)
Vit is going to be improving the general state of Gentoo/GNAP this  
summer. Some of the tasks he hopes to complete are: supporting more  
platforms, make it easier for developers to write extensions, unionfs  
and live upgrade support, catalyst related bug fixes and changes,  
among others.

Setting Beacon Afloat
	by Nandeep Mali
	mentored by Anant Narayanan (anant@g.o)
Nandeep is going to revisit the GuideXML editor "Beacon", and add a  
bunch of features such as collaborative editing, UI spruce-ups, easier  
deployment and rewrites of certain parts of the backend. His ultimate  
goal is to make Beacon a really competitive alternative for developers  
and users to write and collaborate on GuideXML documents.

revdep-rebuild reimplementation
	by Carl Lucian Poston
	mentored by Marius Mauch (genone@g.o)
Carl is going to be re-implementing the revdep-rebuild utility. He's  
planing on using the set framework and linkage information in  
portage-2.2 to improve on revdep-rebuild's current behavior. At the  
end of the project, the tool will model a system's dependencies as a  
dependency graph and resolve all dynamic linker errors by repairing  
broken libraries and packages.

Communicating
	The community bonding period begins now and the purpose is to  
familiarize you with our general community practices. It is *very  
important* that you are in constant touch with your mentor throughout  
the duration of the program. 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 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. We would also  
like you to subscribe to the gentoo-soc mailing list in order to  
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 a lot of us are not native English speakers, so don't be  
ashamed of writing 'bad english'. 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', a  
lot of you are new to the world of open source software, and we are  
aware of 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: A lot of 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

	We would like to point out that 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.

	- Bugzilla: Gentoo maintains a bug database on: http:// 
bugs.gentoo.org/. We recommend you 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 yes, to what extent.

	- Blogs: A lot of developers use blogs to communicate with the  
community at large. We recommend 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 already don't have one), and use it to  
write anything relevant to your project under a category such as  
'soc08' or 'gentoo'. We will be aggregating your blogs on our Planet  
for the entire Gentoo community to read.

Code Management
	- Gentoo uses a mix of CVS, SVN and Git internally. We recommend you  
use an external code hosting service to help manage your code. Some of  
the popular ones are: http://code.google.com/hosting/(SVN), http://sourceforge.net/ 
  (CVS/SVN) and http://repo.or.cz/ (Git). One of the explicit aims of  
the Community Bonding period is to get you upto speed with the version  
control system you will be working with. Please contact your mentor  
for help *before* signing up with a particular service. In some cases,  
you may be expected to work on an existing repository - again -  
contact your mentor for specifics.

Progress Reports
	- We will be expecting weekly progress reports from each of you at  
the very least. Feel free to report more often! Your mentor will tell  
you his preferred method of communication, but you must also post your  
weekly progress reports to the gentoo-soc mailing list, as well as on  
your blog for all to see. 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.

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 our  
organization administrators 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:

	Alec Warner: antarus@g.o
	Grant Goodyear: g2boojum@g.o
	Joshua Jackson: tsunam@g.o

We're looking forward to a great summer with all of you, and hope that  
all 6 projects are successful. Please don't hesitate to use any of the  
mentioned communication channels if you have a question or doubt.

All the best!
--
The GSoC Mentors and Admins for Gentoo
Summer of Code 2008-- 
gentoo-soc@l.g.o mailing list