[gentoo-dev] GSoC project

[Andrei Oprisan]

Hi all,

I am working on a proposal for GSoC 2012 and I'd appreciate any input that you can have towards my proposal, which I'm enclosing below:
(I sent this to the portage mailing list and it was recommended that I send it here as well, to get some more input.)

Project Name: Package statistics reporting tool

Abstract

I am proposing to work on improving the Package statistics reporting tool that was started last as part of GCoC 2011 for Gentoo, Gentoostats (http://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Gentoostats). 
The plan is to continue working on the user end program to upload anonymous information about installed packages on users’ machines to a database that package maintainers and developers have access to, as well as offline support.
Additional package information statistics will be aggregated and a more robust web application will be written to allow for third party data exports, as well as graphical analysis graphs and tools will be incorporated.


Objective

The objective of this project will improve both the data being collected, stored and presented by last year’s iteration of this project, Gentoostats (http://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Gentoostats). 
The anonymous data being uploaded being analyzed and we will improve the data submission model to support additional fields for future updates via a more general package build description file metadata that is more easily extensible.
We will also extend the application and the web site itself to allow for offline submission of data statistics. 
At the core of the project will be creating a rich web 2.0 application with aggregated package information statistics, third party export to CSV and other formats, data manipulation via API calls, as well as graphical analysis graphs and tools will be incorporated.

Deliverables

The deliverables of this project proposal are as follows:
extend data collection schema supported
create offline data export support mechanism
for the web application:
create a feature-rich, web 2.0 web application with user authentication, data submission, data export, user comments, user permissions and roles
create feature-rich data import and export functions
create an API for data import and export
create statistical analysis tools, such as graphs, plots, and package version heat-maps for package version stability analysis and other QA-centric analytics


Timeline

Between April 24 and May 22, a complete breakdown of all the features, functions, and 80% of the web UI and API functions should be wire-framed and completely documented.
When coding begins, on May 22, start working on the command line improvements. Specifically:
May 22 - May 30, finish Deliverable 1.
May 30 - June 10, finish offline data export utility 
June 10 - July 13, complete 3.a and 3.b. A fully functional web 2.0 web site written in PHP/MySQL or Rails have the following features fully functional:
user authentication
data submission
data export
user comments
user permissions
user roles

July 13 - August 10, finish 3.c and 3.d
August 10 - August 20, create full project documentation and review comments for all functions and the API
August 20 (pencils down date) - submit project to Google Code repository

Throughout the entire project, engage the community and mentor for feedback, ideas, and direction.

What do you guys think? Any comments and ideas are welcome!

Thanks,
Andrei Oprisan