[SciPy-Dev] SciPy Central in GSoC 2013

[Ralf Gommers]

On Tue, Apr 9, 2013 at 12:13 PM, Surya Kasturi <suryak at ieee.org> wrote:

>
>
>
> On Tue, Apr 9, 2013 at 11:50 AM, Ralf Gommers <ralf.gommers at gmail.com>wrote:
>
>>
>>
>>
>> On Tue, Apr 9, 2013 at 6:06 AM, Surya Kasturi <suryak at ieee.org> wrote:
>>
>>> Hi everyone,
>>>
>>> How about SciPy Central on GSoC 2013?
>>>
>>> I was thinking to participate in GSoC this year and thought of
>>> contributing to this project as GSoC student. Firstly, I was luck enough to
>>> find SPC which closely matched my interests. Since, I am already slightly
>>> familiar with the existing code, made some small contributions, I thought
>>> it would be very nice to continue my work as GSoC student during summer.
>>>
>>> Is it possible?
>>>
>>
>> Hi Surya, it's definitely possible I think. And a good idea. Improving
>> SciPy Central meets the requirements for a project set by Google and you've
>> already met the requirement of submitting at least one patch before
>> applying.
>>
>>
> Thanks
>
>  I would encourage you to start working on a proposal, and discuss it on
>> this list. Maybe you've seen this already, but just in case:
>> http://wiki.python.org/moin/SummerOfCode/Application
>>
>> I have some ideas in mind.
>
> 1. Making SPC more dynamic. Lets say, we put the
> current functionality over a Content Management System (Django-CMS). We can
> create new pages, add new content dynamically (on fly), change page layout
> dynamically etc... Simply we can make the site like a extended version of
> blogger/ wordpress but not really a blog!
>

Dynamic sounds good, but I have trouble picturing what added functionality
that will bring. Probably due to me not knowing much about Django. Is it
mostly for admins to create new features and do design changes quicker, or
are you allowing users to do new things?

>
> This has been in my mind over long time -- just didn't find opportunity to
> express as I was working on new design and  I was new to the code base and
> couldn't dare to challenge such a big enhancement directly without even
> knowing how existing code is!
>

You have >3 months full time, so being ambitious (but realistic) is good:)


>  2. Commenting system for submissions
> 3. Add points to submissions and reputation for users.
> 4. Improve search
> 5. API, Open Id (sign up), Feeds
>

These all look useful.

>
> 6. Looking for other suggestions, ideas etc..even GSoC project proposal as
> a whole.
>

What about version control and sharing of the code snippets? I see there's
now hg support only but the infrastructure is prepared to add git (and
other dvcs's). Also submitting gists somehow and making improvements of
existing snippets as easy as possible could be interesting.


> Should I try to come up with a one big idea or some 4-5 small ideas
> (number depends on time frame, complexity etc)? Some of the above ideas are
> simple and don't really require total GSoC time (Open Id, Feeds)
>

Either one major idea or several smaller related ones are OK. However keep
in mind that even if you have just one feature/delivery, you should make a
project plan that has intermediate milestones. This is for several reasons
- it helps you feel you're making progress, your mentor and the community
can see that things are moving forward as planned, it helps with the formal
evaluation halfway through GSoC, etc.

Cheers,
Ralf
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/scipy-dev/attachments/20130410/29a09ff3/attachment.html>