[Xapian-devel] Xapian GSoC 2011 admin

[Olly Betts]

Apologies for not getting onto this sooner - I was overseas since
just before the results were announced.

This email is to explain how we plan to handle mentoring and tracking
your projects.  Please read it through and attend to anything which
needs doing when you get a chance.  If anything is unclear, please ask.

James and I have created a set of wiki pages for each of the selected
projects.  You can reach them from this index page:

http://trac.xapian.org/wiki/GSoC2011

For each project there's a summary page linked to from the index page
- I've filled in a table of handy info there.  Please can you check the
info for your project and correct anything I got wrong.

There are two fields to fill in still for most of you - one is your
"work hours".  We realise you probably won't be working exactly the
same hours each day, but it's useful for us to have some idea when
we can expect you to be around.  We recommend being on IRC in #xapian
at least while you are working, as that will make interaction easier.

The other is the location of the repository for your code.  We're
happy for you to use either git or subversion.  If you don't know
either yet, then we suggest going for git.  It's more complex, but
it also seems to be becoming the most popular choice for open source
projects.  And the complexity isn't such an issue really - you just need
to learn the commands for your workflow.

If you're using subversion, we'll give you a branch in our repo.  If
you're using git, you can just clone our repo, commit your changes
locally, and push your changes somewhere public like gitorious or
github.  It's important to remember to push regularly, since then
there's a remote backup of your work, and we can easily keep track
of how you are progressing.

If you can decide which to use, we can then help you get set up.

There are also three sub-pages for each project:

* Journal - this is for you to document your progress, which will help
  us to see how you are doing, but is likely to also help you.  There are
  headings already for each week - during coding, you should probably
  be aiming to make at least a couple of entries a week.  It doesn't
  need to be anything formal - just what you're working on, what you
  got to work, what obstacles you're frustrated by, etc.

* Project plan - this is for the project plan part of your application
  - i.e. the bit which talks about the project and the timeline.  Please
  copy it over from melange and fold in any changes you noted in
  comments after the application deadline.  The reasons for putting it
  here are that you can update it if plans change (which is likely to
  happen in minor ways at least), and that the wider Xapian community
  can't see it in melange.

* Notes - this is intended as a place to note down useful information
  - "Links to useful resources, TODO items, other notes, etc" as the
  template says.

Feel free to create more sub-pages if you'd find them useful, or add
more information to your project page (as Parth already has for his
"Learning to Rank" project).

Each project has a "primary mentor", but in general we will be "group
mentoring" throughout GSoC.  If you have questions or things to discuss,
please air them publicly (in #xapian or on the xapian-devel list) rather
than contacting your primary mentor or an admin privately (unless it's
a personal matter).

We believe that group mentoring will give you a better experience (since
you're likely to get a quicker response than if you're waiting for one
person to respond), and an experience more like typical open source
development, and GSoC is after all about getting involved in open source
development.  And if your primary mentor becomes unavailable, the other
mentors should be up to speed with how you are doing.

The primary mentor is only really distinguished by being the one who
is set as the mentor in melange.

Obviously if you have any questions, ideas or concerns, either reply
to this email or ask us on IRC.

So to conclude, good luck with your projects, and we look forward to
getting to know you better over the course of the next few months.

Cheers,
    Olly (and the other mentors)