GSoC howto: bits of wisdom from Jordi and Matt

[Giovanni Gherdovich]

Hello everybody,

I'm not formally involved in GSoC, but I've been around
for a few months now and I enjoy a lot "all things Mercurial".

As we all know, "getting something done" is different
from "wanting to get something done"; we all want our
three GSoC projects to succeed, so I thought to share
here on the list a few advices that went on IRC these weeks,
just to stick them for future reference.

(1) A few weeks ago Jordi proposed the following documents to read:
    -- for mentors: http://flossmanuals.net/GSoCMentoring/
    -- for students: http://flossmanuals.net/GSoCStudentGuide/
    I went thru them and they're very informative and well written.

(2) Yesterday Matt shared these remarks, that I report here verbatim
    (I hope he won't mind):

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
11:05 PM <mpm> JordiGH: One of the things I've stressed in the past
is that students need to take initiative to communicate
with the relevant people in the community on their projects (eg me)
before they start digging in. So it'd be really good
if I started hearing questions from students about their projects on IRC...

11:06 PM <mpm> JordiGH: Worst case scenario is student digs in,
goes and writes code in a corner, comes back with code that gets
rejected for missing important reqs, runs out of time.

11:08 PM <mpm> In 2011 (last time we did GSoC), I ran a weekly
meeting with an agenda that went like this:

11:09 PM <mpm> - how much communication did you do with the experts?
11:09 PM <mpm> - what's the next patch you can send for review?
(low-hanging fruit)
11:10 PM <mpm> - with weekly letter-grade follow-up from mentors
to let students know if they were on track
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

What can I add? Happy hacking!

Cheers,
Giovanni
ggherdov
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