[Live-demo] Google Summer of Code ideas for the LiveDVD

[Cameron Shorter]

Hamish,
Good feedback, I've struck out the "Consistent Datasets" idea, and left 
the "Automated Testing".


Hamish wrote:
> Cameron wrote:
>   
>> I've set up a page for Google Summer of Code ideas here:
>> http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Live_GIS_Disc_GSoC_2010
>>
>> What other ideas should we add?
>>     
>
> Keep in mind that documentation writing, website overhauls, and other non-
> coding chore-work, while important, are specifically outside the scope of
> GSoC. One of the requirements to get paid is a code deliverable which
> the student need to upload to Google at the end of the summer, which
> contains their & only their work. Which in a practical sense & for better
> or worse mostly means it is useful for succinct lone-wolf style projects.
>
> On the other hand, projects which bring together multiple within-mentoring
> organization projects (& dev teams) as well as multiple mentoring-orgs is
> to be encouraged. (I suspect gaining buy-in and SCM check-in trust from a
> wide pool of projects will require a special & widely known and hands-
> on mentor, otherwise it makes me nervous about giving the student a
> project which is destined to stall.)
>
> So working to get test-suite* & buildbot scripts implemented in all OSGeo
> projects could be a suitable project, but a project to create a common
> dataset probably would not be funded.
>
> [*] (but isn't that supposed to be already-solved as an incubation
> milestone?)
>
>
>   
>> Hamish, I wonder whether you would want to mentor a student
>> who migrates liveDVD packages to .deb files?
>>     
>
> The SoC admin team (which includes me) have decided this year to split
> our time amongst all the student projects instead of trying to that as well.
> And so I won't be a primary mentor on any project, and would only consider
> backup-mentoring if it dealt with code which I was the sole maintainer of,
> & so was absolutely necessary.
>
> Putting stuff in a .deb package is rather simple. Getting stuff packaged
> to pass Debian QA review is a whole other story and much more important.
> (the great advantage of .deb over .rpm has very little to do with the
> technical merits of the two package formats, & has everything to do with
> the standards & peer-review process, IM(biased)O)
>
> To do a good job the mentor for such a project should really be a full
> Debian Developer (DD) already, which I am not. You could ask for
> volunteers on the DebainGIS mailing list if you like, but in most cases
> I suspect it will mainly come down to debianizing Java packages, which
> really means working to get those Java programs to work with a version of
> Java which does not require a click-through agreement. Either by patching
> the program or by helping to improve the open JRE itself.
>
> So while on the surface this looks like a .deb project, I really think
> under the surface it's an inter-project Java one. Once the java problems
> are solved the .debs can flow relatively easily..
>
>
> regards,
> Hamish
>
>
>
>       
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>   


-- 
Cameron Shorter
Geospatial Solutions Manager
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