Re: [Swig-devel] Regarding Google's SOC projects

[Olly B. <ol...@su...>]

On 2010-02-27, William S Fulton <ws...@fu...> wrote:
> There has not yet been any discussions about SWIG participating in GSoC 
> 2010. I for one do not have enough time to get fully involved again. 
> However, if there are any other SWIG developers who would like to 
> mentor, they need to step forward now. If there is enough mentor 
> interest then it may happen.

I've been chatting to another potential applicant on #swig-gsoc in recent
days.

I'm prepared to mentor and/or act as org admin, but we need to know we have a
few people prepared to mentor to make it worth applying, and we need some more
ideas for the ideas list, since several of the ideas from last year are now
implemented completely or partially.

I've been thinking about changes we could make to improve what we all get out
of participating (i.e. SWIG, the students, and the mentors).  I'm happy to
discuss at more length, but since it's uncertain if we'll apply currently
I'll just mention the "top two" briefly:

I'd suggest we focus more on merge-ability - scoping projects such that there's
a realistic likelihood of getting them merged into trunk during the coding
period, or structuring them as a series of smaller items which can each be
merged when complete.  That's more satisfying for both the students and
mentors, and avoids adding to the list of branches which need "a bit more work"
to be merged.

I think we should also look at adding a bit more structure for the students
to report their progress within.  Despite being co-admin last year, I didn't
feel I had a good enough grasp of how all the students were doing.  Etherboot
seem to have a good approach to this, but there are many workable approaches.

Cheers,
    Olly