Re: [Caml-list] GSoC preparedness

[Yotam Barnoy <yotambarnoy@gmail.com>]

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OK yeah -- the details of vouching can definitely be worked out closer to
the date, but projects should be suggested and maintained even starting
now. If we push it off, it'll just get forgotten about, and project ideas
need time to be worked out.

Just to clarify, I think the main problem google had with the old project
page is that the presentation was lacking. Everything is linked, so you
have to do a lot of clicking to get to the ideas, every link is followed by
the word 'draft' for some reason, and some links are to pages that don't
exist, which really gives a bad impression. I don't think it was far off
from being accepted though, because I know the bar and it's not set very
high. For example, look at this page of the organization I used to mentor
for a while back (http://wiki.scummvm.org/index.php/GSoC_Ideas). You want
everything on one page, with links to more details where possible, and no
dead links(!). I think it's really as silly as getting the presentation
right, since google has to sift through 1000s of submissions.

On Fri, Feb 6, 2015 at 11:33 AM, Gabriel Scherer <gabriel.scherer@gmail.com>
wrote:

> The feedback Sylvain got from Google at the time is that the idea page
> should be, quote, "more well-organized and more fleshed out for the
> students who would be visiting to get ideas".
>
> (Note: Sylvain is now working at Google himself so is prevented by
> company policy to work on organizing a new application.)
>
> By the way, google employees may vouch for applications, and their
> support may be helpful at the time of the actual application. Other
> GSoc communities can also vouch, so we could consider asking eg. the
> LLVM project for support. I think those are more like details that can
> be discussed at the time of the actual application, say in January
> 2016.
>
> On Fri, Feb 6, 2015 at 5:28 PM, Yotam Barnoy <yotambarnoy@gmail.com>
> wrote:
> > Thanks for pointing me to the previous effort, Gabriel. Some of that
> > material could probably be reproduced in ocaml.org's wiki, though the
> > proposed projects obviously need to be updated.
> >
> > Do we know why we were rejected in 2011? Was the ideas page just not
> > completed in time, or is it just a case of being rejected without being
> told
> > why?
> >
> > On Fri, Feb 6, 2015 at 11:17 AM, Gabriel Scherer <
> gabriel.scherer@gmail.com>
> > wrote:
> >>
> >> Thanks for starting this discussion.
> >>
> >> I've been considering the idea of preparing an OCaml GSoC application
> >> for Summer 2016. (It's too early to tell but I'm considering
> >> volunteering as a mentor for 2016, while I already know very well that
> >> this would be impossible for 2015.)
> >>
> >> The previous effort led by Sylvain Le Gall and Cristophe Troestler was
> >> in 2011. You can find what they collected here:
> >>
> >>
> https://forge.ocamlcore.org/plugins/mediawiki/wiki/gsoc-team/index.php/Main_Page
> >>
> >> I will try to collect some nice GSoC ideas for OCaml and add them to
> >> the wiki page.
> >>
> >> On Fri, Feb 6, 2015 at 4:51 PM, Yotam Barnoy <yotambarnoy@gmail.com>
> >> wrote:
> >> > I believe the way it works (though I could be wrong) is that an
> >> > open-source
> >> > organization that signs up is supposed to have projects that concerns
> >> > its
> >> > codebase or related components. That means either the toolchain or
> some
> >> > related tool like a debugger or perhaps something like Merlin. Perhaps
> >> > it
> >> > could even extend to a library that can be shown to be extremely
> useful
> >> > to
> >> > the community -- something like Lwt or Batteries.
> >> >
> >> > It would be harder to make the case for something that's purely an
> >> > application on top of OCaml, though I do believe that is possible once
> >> > an
> >> > organization is more established with GSoC, for example Xen getting
> >> > Mirage
> >> > into GSoC -- Anil would probably know more about that kind of thing.
> >> >
> >> > Again, I could be wrong about this, so if anyone has better
> information,
> >> > please correct me.
> >> >
> >> > On Fri, Feb 6, 2015 at 10:42 AM, Ashish Agarwal <
> agarwal1975@gmail.com>
> >> > wrote:
> >> >>
> >> >> What you've written implies that all projects should regard the OCaml
> >> >> compiler itself. Is that the intention? Or could this support
> projects
> >> >> using
> >> >> the OCaml language for other purposes? What other purposes? General
> >> >> tools of
> >> >> use to the OCaml community, or just anything that happens to be
> >> >> implemented
> >> >> in OCaml.
> >> >>
> >> >> Thanks for providing a place to collect these ideas.
> >> >>
> >> >>
> >> >> On Fri, Feb 6, 2015 at 10:35 AM, Yotam Barnoy <yotambarnoy@gmail.com
> >
> >> >> wrote:
> >> >>>
> >> >>> Hey everyone
> >> >>>
> >> >>> Another year has gone by, and Google Summer of Code is upon us
> again.
> >> >>> Unfortunately, it doesn't seem like we're ready to participate this
> >> >>> year
> >> >>> either (sign up dates for mentoring organizations are Feb 9th to the
> >> >>> 20th).
> >> >>> After seeing some comments on reddit, I have taken the liberty of
> >> >>> establishing 2 pages on the ocaml.org wiki:
> >> >>>
> >> >>> - GSoC ideas (https://github.com/ocaml/ocaml.org/wiki/GSoC-ideas):
> >> >>> this
> >> >>> is a list of ideas for projects that students could do. It needs to
> be
> >> >>> filled up and then maintained, so that by next year at least, we
> >> >>> actually
> >> >>> have something to show google.
> >> >>>
> >> >>> - GSoC Application
> >> >>> (https://github.com/ocaml/ocaml.org/wiki/GSoC-application): a
> hastily
> >> >>> filled
> >> >>> out application covering the questions google expects answered. This
> >> >>> should
> >> >>> also be maintained so that it's pretty much ready to go.
> >> >>>
> >> >>> Please fill out these pages as much as you can -- particularly the
> >> >>> ideas
> >> >>> page. I haven't listed any project ideas myself, but I tried to
> write
> >> >>> some
> >> >>> guidelines for the kinds of things that could be used as projects.
> >> >>>
> >> >>> -Yotam
> >> >>
> >> >>
> >> >
> >
> >
>

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