An Update from Joomla’s Google Summer of Code
A detailed update for Joomla's Google Summer of Code Program. With the summer winding down, find out what the students have been up to over the last few months. Learn about their project's progress and how you can get involved!
The Google Summer of Code (GSoC) season is nearing a close. On August 20th students will be asked to stop working on their projects for final reviews. These next few weeks will mark the final stages and finishing touches of their projects.
Throughout the summer, our students have been asked to diligently report on a weekly basis the progress of the projects. They have been providing regular checkins with the GSoC admins, and they had a midterm evaluation with Google as well. During the midterm period (July 9 - 13th), if any of our mentors had felt a student was not performing up to snuff, the student would ‘failed’ the midterm and been asked to stop working on the project. I’m happy and excited to let the community know that none of our students were failed during the midterm, and that all of the projects have been progressing very nicely.
Below is a compilation of the student’s weekly reports for their projects, since the beginning up until their most recent weekly reported update. Several of the students have also provided some more in depth blogs / articles which we have compiled and linked too as well.
Aaron Schmitz - API for JGoole [Joomla Platform]
Aaron has let us know that he is finished adding new code to his project, and he will be spending the remainder of the summer program writing tests, documentation and writing some demo applications for us.
Diana Prajescu - API for JFacebook [Joomla Platform]
Diana has been working on several different classes from several different services, she has been focusing on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. She plans to be implementing Google+ soon as well.
Florian Voutzinos - Workflow Engine and Application [Joomla Platform]
Florian’s work has been to integrate an existing workflow engine into Joomla. He has been working with a framework called Petri. One thing that is really exciting about Florian’s project is that he has 100% test coverage for all of his code! This is fantastic, as unit tests are essential to high quality coding standards. His plans for the rest of the summer include extending functionality of Petri and improving some existing code.
Javier Gómez - Language Installation [Joomla CMS]
I’ve actually been able to watch a lot of Javier’s work as some of what he has been doing is working with the Joomla 3.0 Bootstrap team with the installer, a group which I too am working with. Javier’s work is integral to expanding the multi lingual features and tools that Joomla has. The ability to install and use languages right from the start will make adoption for non-native English speakers much easier, lowering Joomla’s language barrier and making it an even more widely adopted CMS.
Kavith Thiranga Lokuhewage - CSS / Javascript Minification [Joomla Platform]
Kavith has been spending a lot of time the last few weeks working on unit tets, and plans to be completing them this coming week. He is also looking for better ways to invoke and use the library he has written. He is also looking for feedback from the community on a caching mechanism, so if you are able to help out Kavith with this, please get a hold of him on Github or on the developer mailing lists and offer any assistance you have!
Prasath Nadarjah - API for JMediaWiki [Joomla Platform]
Prasath has moved on to creating some test applications for the code library he has written for the MediaWiki API. His application will actually be a Joomla extension, so he is working on learning the particular ins and outs of extension development for Joomla’s CMS. His will also be working on his unit tests in the coming weeks before the GSoC deadline.
Stefan Neculai - Webservice API for Directory Applications [Joomla Platform]
Stefan’s project has been going extremely well, and he is excited to report that he has stayed on track with this early timelines for the project, and even been able to add some additional code functionality that was not planned. He is aware he needs to get some unit tests written which will take the remainder of the summer, no doubt. He is working on getting documentation written too. Stefan’s API needs to be well tested by the community, and he has made it available to be tested here.
Get Involved, Test, Test, Test!
These students have worked extremely hard over this summer, and they have done so to help improve the quality of Joomla as a product and platform. But they cannot do this alone! They do need the help of the community to test their code, point out bugs, or possible issues, and help get clean high quality code for the community. It’s very important that the community work together to help make these projects as successful as possible. So please, visit the Github repos, check out the code, and provide quality feedback. This is how the students will learn to become great contributors to open source projects, and how Joomla will benefit from their fruits of their labor.
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