| 33 | | Boosted by the success of the projects done in 2011, 2014, 2015 and 2017, we're eager to add new features and increase the user-friendliness of MacPorts. We're hoping to attract new developers that will stay with the project and work on new features and necessary refactoring of our code. ~~Big goals this year are improving the dependency calculation and making the Xcode dependency optional.~~ |
| | 33 | Boosted by the success of the projects done in 2011 and 2014, we're eager to add new features and increase the user-friendliness of MacPorts. We're hoping to attract new developers that will stay with the project and work on new features and necessary refactoring of our code. GSoC has helped our organization grow in every aspect, from bringing contributors to the number of packages supported. We believe that giving students the possibility to work with us on the projects we have in our community and to learn from developers will be a great real-world experience for them and help them define their next step in their careers. |
| | 34 | |
| | 35 | The community is evolving to bring members closer than ever, as a result of participation in GSoC. This year, the org admin from 2017, both the students and 2 out of 3 mentors will participate in an international meeting with other community members to brainstorm ideas together and have round-table discussions for future development. |
| 80 | | A disappearing mentor has occurred once when we also had a disappearing student. When the mentor disappeared, another mentor (who soon after became a MacPorts manager) stepped in to cover. |
| 81 | | |
| 82 | | We’ve made it a rule that mentors will communicate with each other about progress and problems of their students and keep the communication on the public list, allowing for a clean failover to another mentor. This also helps with setting expectations and making evaluations. |
| 83 | | |
| 84 | | Projects will usually have multiple mentors, to provide redundancy if one disappears. If a student cannot reach any of their mentors, they should contact an organization administrator, who will have more contact information. If that fails, they should post to the development mailing list reaching a wide number of developers, admin, and backup admin. |
| | 83 | Projects will usually have multiple mentors, to provide redundancy if one disappears or a problem arises, an important takeaway message from this year's GSoC mentors meeting. If a student cannot reach any of their mentors, they should contact the organization administrator, who will have more contact information. We make clear that having a good communication with their students and with us, the coordinators, is mandatory to have a successful mentoring experience. |
| 89 | | We require students' contact information as part of the application. Students will report their progress to their mentor at least once a week, via whichever communication medium works best for both. We know from past experiences that a student can disappear without notice, but if this happens we will not let them pass the midterm or final evaluation. We will make this clear from the start, and students will be urged to maintain regular communication and providing work logs at least twice a week. |
| | 88 | We ask the students to provide a week-to-week schedule, from the starting date to the end date, that shows exactly which objectives they plan on completing and by when and also, indicate whether a task spans across multiple weeks. A clear schedule defined this way helps both the mentors and students to organize themselves and achieve short-term goals to successfully complete the project by the end of the term. |
| | 89 | |
| | 90 | We require students' contact information as part of the application. Students will report their progress to their mentor at least once a week, via whichever communication medium works best for both. |
| | 91 | |
| | 92 | If any problem arises or student disappears without notice, we will not let them pass the midterm or final evaluation. We will make this clear from the start, and students will be urged to maintain regular communication and provide work logs at least twice a week. |
| 94 | | We like to make contact with our students even before they submit their application, via IRC or on our mailing list. During the application phase, we will refine and discuss proposals with other developers. In the program, students participate in our normal development process: they get their own Git branch to work on, all their commits are publicly viewable, and any member of the MacPorts community can provide feedback by replying to the commit system’s emails. We also like students to post status reports to the public development mailing list as they reach specific milestones. By requiring communication with people other than their mentors, we encourage them to work in the spirit of open source development. |
| | 97 | We like to make contact with our students even before they submit their application, via IRC or on our mailing list so they can reach other developers for any questions. During the application phase, we will refine and discuss proposals with other developers. |
| | 98 | |
| | 99 | In the program, students participate in our normal development process: they get their own Git branch to work on, all their commits are publicly viewable, and any member of the MacPorts community can provide feedback on the pull requests. Usually, our community is aware of students working with us in the summers and hence, devote more time in answering to their doubts and clarifying details. |
| | 100 | |
| | 101 | We also like students to post status reports to the public development mailing list as they reach specific milestones. By requiring communication with people other than their mentors, we encourage them to work in the spirit of open source development. |
| 99 | | As we let students work as one of the projects developers, we look forward to their continued development of MacPorts after GSoC concludes. Like any other developer, they will get regular commit privileges to help the project as they see fit; this also provides an introduction to future work. Multiple students have returned as mentors or admins in the following years, demonstrating the effectiveness of this method. |
| | 106 | As we let students work as one of the project developers, we look forward to their continued development of MacPorts after GSoC concludes. They get regular commit privileges to the repository to help the project as they see fit, providing an introduction to future work. Seeing a student’s code “go live” and get used by the project is the single best incentive. |
| | 107 | |
| | 108 | Multiple students have returned as mentors or admins in the following years, demonstrating the effectiveness of this method. This year's org admins are students from 2015 and 2017 and one of the mentors from 2011. We are having an international meeting again this year where both the students from last year are invited to meet the community and participate in the hacking sessions, along with travel support. We also plan to keep in contact with the student to see if there are additional areas or less demanding tasks of MacPorts that might interest them for long-term involvement. |
