layout	title
default	SoC 2017 Applicant Microprojects

Introduction

It is strongly recommended that students who want to apply to the Git project for the Summer of Code 2017 submit a small code-related patch to the Git project as part of their application. Think of these microprojects as the "Hello, world" of getting involved with the Git project; the coding aspect of the change can be almost trivial, but to make the change the student has to become familiar with many of the practical aspects of working on the Git project.

Git development is based on sending successive versions of patches or patch series to the mailing list until they are considered good and correct by the reviewers and Junio Hamano, the maintainer, who will merge them. This process usually takes quite some time. By sending drafts of your microproject patches to the mailing list long before the deadline, you can show us that you are willing and able to work well using the Git development process.

It is expected that what you send will need several rounds of reviews and discussions. If you are not sure at all about a patch you can put "[RFC/PATCH]" at the beginning of its subject.

Consider a sample email thread, which shows how a developer proposed a change and a patch to implement it. The problem being solved, the design of the proposed solution, and the implementation of that design were all reviewed and discussed, and after several iterations an improved version of the patch was accepted into our codebase. As a GSoC student, you will be playing the role of the developer and engaging in a similar discussion. Get familar with the flow, need for clarity on both sides (i.e. you need to clearly defend your design, and need to ask clarifications when questions/suggestions you are offered are not clear enough), the pace at which the discussion takes place, and the general tone of the discussion, to learn what is expected of you.

To complete a microproject, you will have to go through approximately the following steps:

Download the source code: clone the repository using the Git via Git instructions and read the README file.
Build the source code: this is described in the file INSTALL.
Glance over our coding guidelines in the file Documentation/CodingGuidelines. We take things like proper code formatting very seriously.
Read about the process for submitting patches to Git: this is described in Documentation/SubmittingPatches.
Select a microproject and check that it has not yet been taken or discussed by searching the mailing list. Public Inbox is your friend.
Make the actual change. (Funny, this is the only part they teach you about in college.)
Run the test suite and make sure it passes 100%: this is described in the file t/README. (If you have added new functionality, you should also add new tests, but most microprojects will not add new functionality.)
Commit your change. Surprise: we use Git for that, so you will need to gain at least a basic familiarity with using Git. Make sure to write a good commit message that explains the reason for the change and any ramifications. Remember to make sure that you agree with our "Developer's Certificate of Origin" (whose text is contained in Documentation/SubmittingPatches), and to signify your agreement by adding a Signed-off-by line.
Optional, but recommended: Create a fork of Git on github.com, sign in to Travis CI with your GitHub account, accepting the GitHub access permissions confirmation, and enable builds of your Git fork in your Travis CI profile (you only have to do these steps once). Afterwards you can push your changes to your fork and on https://travis-ci.org/your-github-name/git/builds (example here) you can see if your changes pass the Git test suite on Ubuntu Linux and on Mac OS X.
Submit your change to the Git mailing list. For this step you probably want to use the commands git format-patch and git send-email. Make sure that your email is formatted correctly: send a test version of the email to yourself and see if you can apply it to your repository using git am. Alternatively you may use submitGit.
Expect feedback, criticism, suggestions, etc. from the mailing list.

Respond to it! and follow up with improved versions of your change. Even for a trivial patch you shouldn't be surprised if it takes two or more iterations before your patch is accepted. This is the best part of participating in the Git community; it is your chance to get personalized instruction from very experienced peers!

The coding part of the microproject should be very small (say, 10-30 minutes). We don't require that your patch be accepted into master by the time of your formal application; we mostly want to see that you have a basic level of competence and especially the ability to interact with the other Git developers.

When you submit your patch, please mention that you plan to apply for the GSoC. This will ensure that we take special care not to overlook your application among the large pile of others.

Students: Please attempt only ONE microproject. We want quality, not quantity! (Also, it takes work to collect the ideas, and it would be nice to have enough microprojects for everybody.) If you've already done a microproject and are itching to do more, then get involved in other ways, like finding and fixing other problems in the code, or improving the documentation or code comments, or helping to review other people's patches on the mailing list, or answering questions on the mailing list or in IRC, or writing new tests, etc., etc. In short, start doing things that other Git developers do!

Ideas for microprojects

The following are just ideas. Any small code-related change would be suitable. Just remember to keep the change small! It is much better for you to finish a small but complete change than to try something too ambitious and not get it done.

Add more builtin patterns for userdiff

"git diff" shows the function name corresponding to each hunk after the @@ ... @@ line. For common languages (C, HTML, Ada, Matlab, ...), the way to find the function name is built-in Git's source code as regular expressions (see userdiff.c). A few languages are common enough to deserve a built-in driver, but are not yet recognized. For example, shell.

This project requires a very good knowledge of regular expressions.

Make "`git tag --contains <id>`" less chatty if `<id>` is invalid

git tag --contains <id> prints the whole help text if <id> is invalid. It should only show the error message instead. [thread]