Getting Ensimag students to work on Git for a few weeks

Getting Ensimag students to work on Git for a few weeks

[Matthieu Moy]

Hi,

I'd like to propose a kind of mini-google summer of code to the
students of the the school where I teach, i.e. Ensimag, France
( http://ensimag.grenoble-inp.fr/ ). In short, this means having a few
students working for Git for a month at no cost ;-).

Currently, the students have an end-of-year project (in equivalent of
master 1) with the choice between many subjects, some of them being
somehow "real-life" (i.e. actually usefull things), and other being
artificial (i.e. enjoy doing it, and throw it away afterwards).

This year, I'd like to propose a subject "contribution to an existing
free software", and since the one I know best currently is Git, this
would take the form of "contribution to the Git project". I'd see the
practical organization a bit like the google summer of code: chose a
feature (the GSoC proposals on the wiki can be a good source of
inspiration), and implement it with the goal of being eventually
merged upstream. There would be no money involved, but the students
get a grade at the end. I would anyway follow the work of the
students, but a co-mentoring from a Git expert would be great.

The students work full-time for about 3 weeks (May 20th to June 16th),
and are grouped by teams of 2 to 4 students. Given my bandwidth, I
plan to propose only one group of 4 students this year, but we may
scale up later, who knows.

We have plenty of time before this starts, but I'm just sending this
email to get your feeling on it.

Any opinion? Do you like the idea?

-- 
Matthieu Moy
http://www-verimag.imag.fr/~moy/

Re: Getting Ensimag students to work on Git for a few weeks

[Johannes Schindelin]

Hi,

On Tue, 27 Oct 2009, Matthieu Moy wrote:

> I'd like to propose a kind of mini-google summer of code to the students 
> of the the school where I teach, i.e. Ensimag, France ( 
> http://ensimag.grenoble-inp.fr/ ). In short, this means having a few 
> students working for Git for a month at no cost ;-).

Do not underestimate the cost of time and nerves, both on the student's 
and the mentor's part.

I spent an insane amount of time on the Google Summer of Code this year, 
a relatively small (but not less frustrating) part of which was with Git.  

Ciao,
Dscho

Re: Getting Ensimag students to work on Git for a few weeks

[Matthieu Moy]

Johannes Schindelin <Johannes.Schindelin@gmx.de> writes:

> Hi,
>
> On Tue, 27 Oct 2009, Matthieu Moy wrote:
>
>> I'd like to propose a kind of mini-google summer of code to the students 
>> of the the school where I teach, i.e. Ensimag, France ( 
>> http://ensimag.grenoble-inp.fr/ ). In short, this means having a few 
>> students working for Git for a month at no cost ;-).
>
> Do not underestimate the cost of time and nerves, both on the student's 
> and the mentor's part.

Hey, you're talking to a teacher ;-).

Yes, for sure, this takes a lot of time. But on my side that's my job,
the school gives me time to mentor the students. And I'll be
geographically close to the students, having regular physical
meetings, ... I'd appreciate a co-mentor, but the feedback from the
mailing list (like the one for non-school-related contributors) plus
my mentoring can be sufficient.

-- 
Matthieu Moy
http://www-verimag.imag.fr/~moy/

Re: Getting Ensimag students to work on Git for a few weeks

[Clemens Buchacher]

On Tue, Oct 27, 2009 at 11:12:52AM +0100, Matthieu Moy wrote:

> The students work full-time for about 3 weeks (May 20th to June 16th),
> and are grouped by teams of 2 to 4 students. Given my bandwidth, I
> plan to propose only one group of 4 students this year, but we may
> scale up later, who knows.

That's not much time to get familiar with a complex project like git. So you
will have to do something extremely simple, which probably means that it
won't be anything exciting. If it were, someone else would have done it
already.

Clemens

Re: Getting Ensimag students to work on Git for a few weeks

[Matthieu Moy]

Clemens Buchacher <drizzd@aon.at> writes:

> That's not much time to get familiar with a complex project like git. So you
> will have to do something extremely simple,

That very much depends on which students. Some of our students are
already experienced programmers when the enter the school. If I manage
to attract such students, a group of 4 can do a bit more than
"extremely simple".

> which probably means that it won't be anything exciting. 

Depending "exiting for who" ... my first contributions to free
software were very trivial code, and I found it very exciting the day
I got 20 trivial lines of code of mine into GNU Emacs ;-).

So, the feature may not be exciting, but I think the experience for
students could be.

-- 
Matthieu Moy
http://www-verimag.imag.fr/~moy/

Re: Getting Ensimag students to work on Git for a few weeks

[Jakub Narebski]

Clemens Buchacher <drizzd@aon.at> writes:

> On Tue, Oct 27, 2009 at 11:12:52AM +0100, Matthieu Moy wrote:
> 
> > The students work full-time for about 3 weeks (May 20th to June 16th),
> > and are grouped by teams of 2 to 4 students. Given my bandwidth, I
> > plan to propose only one group of 4 students this year, but we may
> > scale up later, who knows.
> 
> That's not much time to get familiar with a complex project like git. So you
> will have to do something extremely simple, which probably means that it
> won't be anything exciting. If it were, someone else would have done it
> already.

Let's take a look at some projects from SoC2009Ideas and Wishlist:
* "smart" HTTP transport is being actively worked on
* narrow / sparse checkout is being worked on
* directory renames development stalled, I think last was in
  http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.version-control.git/99529
* git-svnserver has supposedly partial Python implementation
* restartable clone, which should be fairly easy to add to "dumb"
  protocols, and quite challenging to add to "smart" protocols;
  even without a code, having fresh ideas would be nice
* (optional) support for empty directories, needs index extension,
  there were some patches, but the area might be muddy

It all depends on what you want to achieve in this short time.  Would
it be to get to know OSS development workflow (submitting patches,
answering reviews, etc.), or would it be solving interesting real-life
problem, or perhaps solving some problem from beginning to the end
(the code being accepted).

-- 
Jakub Narebski
Poland
ShadeHawk on #git

Re: Getting Ensimag students to work on Git for a few weeks

[Hervé Cauwelier]

On 27/10/2009 11:12, Matthieu Moy wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I'd like to propose a kind of mini-google summer of code to the
> students of the the school where I teach, i.e. Ensimag, France
> ( http://ensimag.grenoble-inp.fr/ ). In short, this means having a few
> students working for Git for a month at no cost ;-).

Have you considered projects contributing to libgit2? The students at 
ULCO [1] will be mentored by Andreas Ericsson.

Given that libgit2 is quite empty, there are many small tasks like 
starting commits, trees, tags, etc. objects.

But I guess he won't have time for mentoring more students.

[1] 
http://dpt-info.univ-littoral.fr/mediawiki/index.php/I2L:Projet#libgit2_-_Herv.C3.A9_Cauwelier_-_itaapy

-- 
Hervé Cauwelier - ITAAPY - 9 rue Darwin 75018 Paris
Tél. 01 42 23 67 45 - Fax 01 53 28 27 88
http://www.itaapy.com/ - http://www.cms-migration.com

Re: Getting Ensimag students to work on Git for a few weeks

[Matthieu Moy]

Hervé Cauwelier <herve@itaapy.com> writes:

> Have you considered projects contributing to libgit2?

Right now, the project is just an idea, so I didn't consider an idea
in particular. But I'd love to get people to work on libgit2 (I really
think this is _the_ thing that SVN has and that Git lacks), and
therefore, I'd love my students to work on this.

But as much as possible, I'll wait and decide the exact project with
the students.

> The students at ULCO [1] will be mentored by Andreas Ericsson.

Thanks for the pointer.

> Given that libgit2 is quite empty, there are many small tasks like
> starting commits, trees, tags, etc. objects.

OTOH, I don't know whether we'd get as much feedback working on
libgit2 than working on Git itself.

-- 
Matthieu Moy
http://www-verimag.imag.fr/~moy/

Re: Getting Ensimag students to work on Git for a few weeks

[Matthieu Moy]

Hi,

I'm resurecting an old thread :

  http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.version-control.git/131321
  (message copied below)

and welcoming Diane, Axel and Clément (CC-ed), 3 students who have
chosen this project. Right now, they're trying to get familiar with
the codebase. As a first exercice, they'll try to add textconv support
to git-blame. The next tasks are undecided yet (but advices are
welcome).

I hope the project will be productive, both for students and the Git community!

On Tue, Oct 27, 2009 at 12:12 PM, Matthieu Moy
<Matthieu.Moy@grenoble-inp.fr> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I'd like to propose a kind of mini-google summer of code to the
> students of the the school where I teach, i.e. Ensimag, France
> ( http://ensimag.grenoble-inp.fr/ ). In short, this means having a few
> students working for Git for a month at no cost ;-).
>
> Currently, the students have an end-of-year project (in equivalent of
> master 1) with the choice between many subjects, some of them being
> somehow "real-life" (i.e. actually usefull things), and other being
> artificial (i.e. enjoy doing it, and throw it away afterwards).
>
> This year, I'd like to propose a subject "contribution to an existing
> free software", and since the one I know best currently is Git, this
> would take the form of "contribution to the Git project". I'd see the
> practical organization a bit like the google summer of code: chose a
> feature (the GSoC proposals on the wiki can be a good source of
> inspiration), and implement it with the goal of being eventually
> merged upstream. There would be no money involved, but the students
> get a grade at the end. I would anyway follow the work of the
> students, but a co-mentoring from a Git expert would be great.
>
> The students work full-time for about 3 weeks (May 20th to June 16th),
> and are grouped by teams of 2 to 4 students. Given my bandwidth, I
> plan to propose only one group of 4 students this year, but we may
> scale up later, who knows.
>
> We have plenty of time before this starts, but I'm just sending this
> email to get your feeling on it.
>
> Any opinion? Do you like the idea?

-- 
Matthieu

Re: Getting Ensimag students to work on Git for a few weeks

[Clemens Buchacher]

On Fri, May 21, 2010 at 07:44:42PM +0200, Matthieu Moy wrote:

> As a first exercice, they'll try to add textconv support
> to git-blame. The next tasks are undecided yet (but advices are
> welcome).

Just FYI, there is a patch pending to add textconv support to git-gui.

 http://mid.gmane.org/20100415193944.GA5848@localhost

Clemens

Re: Getting Ensimag students to work on Git for a few weeks

[Clément Poulain]

Le 22/05/2010 13:26, Clemens Buchacher a écrit :
> On Fri, May 21, 2010 at 07:44:42PM +0200, Matthieu Moy wrote:
>
>    
>> As a first exercice, they'll try to add textconv support
>> to git-blame. The next tasks are undecided yet (but advices are
>> welcome).
>>      
> Just FYI, there is a patch pending to add textconv support to git-gui.
>
>   http://mid.gmane.org/20100415193944.GA5848@localhost
>
> Clemens
>    
Thank you for this information.

As we are about to finish to add textconv support to git-blame, we'll 
now look to add it to git-gui blame.
We wonder what would be the best choice between add a second option "Use 
Textconv For Blames", or transform the existing one (introduced by the 
patch above) into "Use Textconv For Diffs and Blames" (so the user 
wouldn't have the choice to use textconv only for Diffs or only for 
Blames; is it really usefull ?).
Your advice is welcome !

Thanks,
Clément