GSoC 2015 is over

GSoC 2015 is over

[Matthieu Moy]

Hi,

The Google Summer of Code 2015 is officially over. We had two students
(Paul and Karthik), and both of them passed. 100 % success :-).

I didn't follow closely Paul's work, but we now have C builtins for
"pull" and "am" (both in master) instead of shell scripts. Karthik
worked on the unification of "for-each-ref", "tag" and "branch". We
already have more options for "for-each-ref". tag and branch are being
ported to use the same library code as "for-each-ref" (2 patch series
under review).

I consider this GSoC as a great success and a pleasant experience.
Congratulation to Paul and Karthik, and a warm "thank you" to everybody
who contributed: administrators, mentors, reviewers, and obviously
Junio! (not to mention Google, who made all this possible)

Thanks all!

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

Re: GSoC 2015 is over

[Karthik Nayak]

On Tue, Sep 1, 2015 at 10:25 PM, Matthieu Moy
<Matthieu.Moy@grenoble-inp.fr> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> The Google Summer of Code 2015 is officially over. We had two students
> (Paul and Karthik), and both of them passed. 100 % success :-).
>

Congrats Paul :)

> I didn't follow closely Paul's work, but we now have C builtins for
> "pull" and "am" (both in master) instead of shell scripts. Karthik
> worked on the unification of "for-each-ref", "tag" and "branch". We
> already have more options for "for-each-ref". tag and branch are being
> ported to use the same library code as "for-each-ref" (2 patch series
> under review).
>
> I consider this GSoC as a great success and a pleasant experience.
> Congratulation to Paul and Karthik, and a warm "thank you" to everybody
> who contributed: administrators, mentors, reviewers, and obviously
> Junio! (not to mention Google, who made all this possible)
>
> Thanks all!
>

Thanks to everyone for helping us through this. Especially my mentors
Christian Couder and Matthieu Moy, thanks for guiding me through the project
and sparing time for reviews and suggestions, also thanks to everyone else for
their suggestions over the course of the project, especially Junio and Eric :)

Theres still a lot to do with respect to the project, and I dedicate myself to
finishing it completely. And even continue contributing to Git even after that.

Has been a pleasant experience overall.

-- 
Regards,
Karthik Nayak

Re: GSoC 2015 is over

[Paul Tan]

On Wed, Sep 2, 2015 at 1:43 AM, Karthik Nayak <karthik.188@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Tue, Sep 1, 2015 at 10:25 PM, Matthieu Moy
> <Matthieu.Moy@grenoble-inp.fr> wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> The Google Summer of Code 2015 is officially over. We had two students
>> (Paul and Karthik), and both of them passed. 100 % success :-).
>>
>
> Congrats Paul :)

Thanks, you too ;-)

Re: GSoC 2015 is over

[Jeff King]

On Tue, Sep 01, 2015 at 06:55:04PM +0200, Matthieu Moy wrote:

> I consider this GSoC as a great success and a pleasant experience.
> Congratulation to Paul and Karthik, and a warm "thank you" to everybody
> who contributed: administrators, mentors, reviewers, and obviously
> Junio! (not to mention Google, who made all this possible)

I think both students did a great job this year. I was especially
pleased to see the degree to which the students were present on the
list, posting patches early, getting review, and engaging in discussion.
That is how non-GSoC contributors work, and I hope it is how all GSoCs
will go in the future.

I also want to also say a special thank you to Matthieu. After agreeing
to sign up as the backup administrator, he basically did all of the
administrative work this year. Also how I hope GSoCs will go in the
future. ;)

-Peff

Re: GSoC 2015 is over

[Paul Tan]

On Wed, Sep 2, 2015 at 12:55 AM, Matthieu Moy
<Matthieu.Moy@grenoble-inp.fr> wrote:
> I consider this GSoC as a great success and a pleasant experience.
> Congratulation to Paul and Karthik, and a warm "thank you" to everybody
> who contributed: administrators, mentors, reviewers, and obviously
> Junio! (not to mention Google, who made all this possible)
>
> Thanks all!

Thanks! The products of my project are not perfect (Jeff just fixed
another bug in the builtin am >< Thanks!), and there are still a few
leftover bits, but I hope that I've provided a good base of code for
working on.

Off the top of my head, the leftover bits are:

1. Stefan noticed that the help strings of git-am's options could be
more user-friendly:
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.version-control.git/272876/focus=273029

2. Johannes suggested that get_tracking_branch() in builtin/pull.c
could be implemented with remote_find_tracking():
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.version-control.git/269258/focus=269350

3. Junio noticed off-list that relative paths do not work with
git-fetch and git-pull

Other possible future developments:

1. git am --3way implemented on top of git apply --3way

2. builtin/mailinfo.c looks to me like a good candidate for moving
into libgit.a, so that git am can access its functionality without
spawning a separate process and writing temporary files.

On my part, I have to give a big thank you to Junio, as well as my
mentors Johannes and Stefan, for reviewing my patches. Their timely
review of my patches played a great part in getting my project into
master. Jeff, Eric and many others contributed by reporting bugs,
giving ideas and cleaning up my mess.

Above all, I would like to thank the organization admins as well as my
mentors for running the GSoC program. Thank you for this wonderful
opportunity. I've learned a lot, and had lots of fun.

I've really enjoyed my time with the Git community, and will stay
around for the foreseeable future.

Regards,
Paul

Re: GSoC 2015 is over

[Johannes Schindelin]

Hi,

On Wed, 2 Sep 2015, Paul Tan wrote:

> On Wed, Sep 2, 2015 at 12:55 AM, Matthieu Moy
> <Matthieu.Moy@grenoble-inp.fr> wrote:
> > I consider this GSoC as a great success and a pleasant experience.
> > Congratulation to Paul and Karthik, and a warm "thank you" to everybody
> > who contributed: administrators, mentors, reviewers, and obviously
> > Junio! (not to mention Google, who made all this possible)
> >
> > Thanks all!
> 
> Thanks!

Well, with so many thankyous going on, who am I to hide behind a rock?

Seriously again, Paul, it is so good to have you. I have mentored GSoC
students before and it is no secret that I had to take a (partially
forced) break. This summer was really excellent for me because I could be
lazy ;-)

What strikes me as particularly pleasant is that you are really
responsive and I personally feel that your project has not only been
successful but will benefit many, many Windows users once 2.6.0 comes out
(the performance boost will be noticeable, I am sure).

So here is a hearfelt: well done!

Ciao,
Dscho

Re: GSoC 2015 is over

[Christian Couder]

Hi,

On Thu, Sep 3, 2015 at 12:46 AM, Johannes Schindelin
<Johannes.Schindelin@gmx.de> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> On Wed, 2 Sep 2015, Paul Tan wrote:
>
>> On Wed, Sep 2, 2015 at 12:55 AM, Matthieu Moy
>> <Matthieu.Moy@grenoble-inp.fr> wrote:
>> > I consider this GSoC as a great success and a pleasant experience.
>> > Congratulation to Paul and Karthik, and a warm "thank you" to everybody
>> > who contributed: administrators, mentors, reviewers, and obviously
>> > Junio! (not to mention Google, who made all this possible)
>> >
>> > Thanks all!
>>
>> Thanks!
>
> Well, with so many thankyous going on, who am I to hide behind a rock?

Yeah, not to hide behind a rock myself either, I will say that I agree
Karthik's GSoC has been a great success, thanks to everyone involved
especially Karthik who has been very responsive and very persistant,
Matthieu who has been a great co-mentor, a great reviewer and a great
admin, and Eric, Michael and Junio who have been great reviewers of
Karthik's work.

I also feel very lucky to be the Git project mentor who will go to the
GSoC mentor summit on November 6 & 7. Thanks!

By the way while in the Bay Area from October 31 to November 14 it
would be nice for me to meet some Git developers living there. As Peff
suggested we could even have a mini GitTogether if enough developers
are interested. It doesn't need to be big. It could be just a lunch or
diner. Tell me if you are interested. We will see depending on the
number of people interested what we can do.

Thanks,
Christian.

Re: GSoC 2015 is over

[Junio C Hamano]

Matthieu Moy <Matthieu.Moy@grenoble-inp.fr> writes:

> I consider this GSoC as a great success and a pleasant experience.
> Congratulation to Paul and Karthik, and a warm "thank you" to everybody
> who contributed: administrators, mentors, reviewers, and obviously
> Junio! (not to mention Google, who made all this possible)
>
> Thanks all!

I've been generally negative about GSoC from past years' experience,
but this year's GSoC made me rethink.  It can work well ;-).

I do not know what made it different this year from years past.  We
may want to ask ourselves what made it a successful year, so that we
can repeat the success factors the next year:

 * The individual qualities of the students we got this year must
   have been a major factor.  This we can indirectly influence by
   having a very engaging microproject period, I think, and we did
   so this year.

 * I cannot say anything about mentor-student interactions, which
   are largely private.  Mentors may want to share tips to get
   students more engaged, or perhaps the level of engagement was
   primarily affected by who the students were.  I dunno.

 * The topics chosen this year were well-sized, not overly nebulous.

 * The reviewers were helpful and probably more active than past
   years.

Thanks.

Re: GSoC 2015 is over

[Stefan Beller]

On Wed, Sep 2, 2015 at 10:58 AM, Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com> wrote:
> Matthieu Moy <Matthieu.Moy@grenoble-inp.fr> writes:
>
>> I consider this GSoC as a great success and a pleasant experience.
>> Congratulation to Paul and Karthik, and a warm "thank you" to everybody
>> who contributed: administrators, mentors, reviewers, and obviously
>> Junio! (not to mention Google, who made all this possible)
>>
>> Thanks all!
>

Congratulations Paul and Karthik!

>
> I do not know what made it different this year from years past.  We
> may want to ask ourselves what made it a successful year, so that we
> can repeat the success factors the next year:
>
>  * The individual qualities of the students we got this year must
>    have been a major factor.  This we can indirectly influence by
>    having a very engaging microproject period, I think, and we did
>    so this year.
>
>  * I cannot say anything about mentor-student interactions, which
>    are largely private.  Mentors may want to share tips to get
>    students more engaged, or perhaps the level of engagement was
>    primarily affected by who the students were.  I dunno.

As a first time mentor, I sometimes had the feeling of not doing enough
mentoring. Though maybe just because of less private student-mentor
interaction the reviews came to the list earlier exposing the patches to
a wider audience?

>
>  * The topics chosen this year were well-sized, not overly nebulous.
>
>  * The reviewers were helpful and probably more active than past
>    years.
>
> Thanks.

Re: GSoC 2015 is over

[Matthieu Moy]

Stefan Beller <sbeller@google.com> writes:

> On Wed, Sep 2, 2015 at 10:58 AM, Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com> wrote:
>
>>  * The individual qualities of the students we got this year must
>>    have been a major factor.  This we can indirectly influence by
>>    having a very engaging microproject period, I think, and we did
>>    so this year.

For sure, having good students does help ;-).

Note that "good" students is not just a matter of technical skills, but
also largely a matter of motivation, perseverance & so. I remember in
past years students for which we had very high hopes and who lost
interest in the GSoC during the summer.

It's actually very hard to identify good students before the project. My
experience (in GSoC and elsewhere) is that the correlation between how
well we rate the student in the selection period and how it actually
goas afterwards is weak (or sometimes, there is a correlation, but with
a negative slope!).

Microprojects are a very good way to improve this correlation, and at
least to eliminate really bad students quickly. We had 11 proposals this
year, and we really discussed about 3 or 4 of them, others were
discarded early.

Microprojects also give students a taste of what "contributing to Git"
means. As a consequence, the "community bonding period" is essentially
useless: it's already done. As mentors, we did give a few advices to
Karthik during that period, but essentially on the way to manage his own
project, as he already knew the community.

>>  * I cannot say anything about mentor-student interactions, which
>>    are largely private.  Mentors may want to share tips to get
>>    students more engaged, or perhaps the level of engagement was
>>    primarily affected by who the students were.  I dunno.
>
> As a first time mentor, I sometimes had the feeling of not doing enough
> mentoring. Though maybe just because of less private student-mentor
> interaction the reviews came to the list earlier exposing the patches to
> a wider audience?

Actually, I think a good mentor-student relation is to avoid
mentor-student relation ;-).

On our side, we exchanged a few emails. We have a private thread with 29
emails, most of them very short. We did sometimes pre-review: add a few
comments on a draft on GitHub before sending to the list, to save other
reviewers some time on easy-to-catch mistakes, but the important
discussions were done on-list.

Quite often, the on-list consensus was proving my off-list remarks
wrong, but the time lapse between my incorrect statement and the
correction by the list was short, and thanks to this, not much time was
lost. Much better than spending the summer working on incorrect
statements or speculations on what the actual review will look like.

>>  * The topics chosen this year were well-sized, not overly nebulous.

Interestingly, both projects were essentially internal refactoring ones
(the one I mentored last year was, too). Nothing really impressive for
the end-user, but in both cases a substantial contribution to Git's
maintainability.

I'm positively surprised that students chose these topics. They are not
the best subjects to show off with your friends ("see this new command
you love so much, *I* implemented it!"), but are necessary work to make
the codebase healthier.

The tempting trap we avoided is the flashy project ending up with a very
impressive prototype that no one wants to maintain.

IOW, I think we decreased the technical debt of Git, while we gave into
the temptation of increasing it in the past.

>>  * The reviewers were helpful and probably more active than past
>>    years.

For Karthik (I didn't follow Paul enough to say), reviewers did a really
great job. Especially Junio and Eric, but many other helped too. I was
amazed by the amount of change from iteration to iteration.

I'd add one item:

* We limited the number of slots. A successful GSoC has to be a lot of
  work for many people (student, mentor, reviewer, maintainer). We have
  a limited bandwidth to deal with the GSoC, and I think that focusing
  on a small number of slots is a good strategy.

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