[Mapbender-dev] Google Summer of Code 2008 - let's go

[Christoph Baudson]

A very warm welcome to our Summer of Code students Len and Siddharth, 
and a big thank you to all applicants for the time they spent. 
Unfortunately Google only granted us two slots, we would have loved to 
have more. I have already spoken to Arif and Sandy who were denied, they 
are considering contributing to Mapbender anyway, which would be great, 
as they are not at all less qualified than Len and Siddharth and would 
really help us to improve Mapbender.

Let me give you a quick tour with a lot of starting points. The official 
begin is in May, so the next two weeks can be useful for getting to know 
the project, the tools and the people.

I would like to encourage you to use the information channels rather 
than contacting me privately. All the information channels are logged 
and so we do not lose information, you have that log to go back to. 
Others can join in. However, for non-project-related discussions, 
contacting me privately at christoph at osgeo.org (or Testbaudson @ GTalk) 
is perfectly fine.

Mapbender provides
- Wiki (http://www.mapbender.org, contact me about an account)
- Mailing lists and IRC (http://www.mapbender.org/Mapbender_Mailing_Lists)
- Issue Tracker (http://www.mapbender.org/Trac)

Make yourself familiar with these tools and ask if you need to know 
anything. Create your own user page at the wiki. Sign up for the mailing 
lists. Get an account for Trac, and take a peek into the IRC channel.

People here are helpful and will answer your questions thoroughly, 
however I want to encourage you to try to figure out things on your own, 
most information is in the Wiki. You have to be able to work on your own 
in order to be successful. If you find errors, correct them. Add content 
and help to improve. Ask if you're stuck and you will get help. Just be 
active.

Besides the pages mentioned above, please take a thorough look at

http://www.mapbender.org/Development

and the pages linked there. You need to understand a little about how 
Mapbender is administered and your duties as developers in order to go 
with the flow.

Install your local copy of Mapbender (use Mapbender 2.5 rc2). You will 
find an installation guide here: http://www.mapbender.org/Installation_en

Read the tutorial at http://www.mapbender.org/Mapbender_Tutorial_en, and 
check out some applications like

gui
admin2_en
admin_en_services

Then, take a look at the code. The most important files to understand at 
the beginning are

http/frames/index.php
http/frames/login.php
http/javascripts/map.php
http/javascripts/core.php

Start with /http/frames/index.php and go on from there. Take a look into 
files linked from the above files.

I will be out of office until May 5th, but please feel free to send me 
an e-mail if I'm unavailable at IRC. I hope to be able to respond promptly.

Let the coding begin... :-)

-- 
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Christoph Baudson
Anwendungsentwickler

Fon: +49 (0)228 / 90 90 38 - 15
Fax: +49 (0)228 / 90 90 38 - 11
christoph.baudson at wheregroup.com
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