[Soc-coordination] Call for Projects & Mentors for Google Summer of Code 2012

Gergely Nagy algernon at balabit.hu
Mon Feb 20 09:58:24 UTC 2012


Niels Thykier <niels at thykier.net> writes:

>> Yeah, I think that's a reasonably-sized project.  (And it would be great
>> to have that done!)

Seconded!

> Create Lintian reports frontend
> ===============================
>
> The static package analysis tool, Lintian, is currently being run on
> all packages in Debian.  It has a tool called "harness" to publish the
> results of its quality checks on lintian.debian.org.
>
> Currently, "harness" is an "internal" tool to generate these reports,
> but we believe it would be useful to Debian as well as its many derivatives
> to have a propper tool for generating these reports.

s/propper/proper/

> The project will consist of two parts.  Part 1 will be to create a
> black box test suite to test the current harness tool.  Part 2 will be
> to rewrite "harness" into a proper tool.

I'd rewrite the above like this:

,----
| The project is made up of two parts: the first part is to create a black
| box test suite to test the current harness tool, the second is to
| rewrite "harness" into a proper tool that is usable without a pilot
| license.
`----

This means pretty much the same thing, but is more catchy, and easier to
read, in my opinion. O:)

>  * Co-mentors:  Any takers? :)

I can help out, I think. My perl-foo is a bit rusty, and my gnuplot
knowledge is non-existent, but apart from this, I should be okay.

>  * Deliverables of the project:
>    * New automated harness test-suite
>    * New harness frontend

There's one thing missing from the description, and from the
deliverables: a more newbie-friendly explanation of what the harness
tool does. I'm not exactly sure about this, though, and I have no idea
yet what I'd extend the description with, but I have this annoying
feeling that keeps bugging me.

I'll get back to you as soon as I find out what I'm missing.

>  * Desirable skills:
>    * Perl and POD
>    * docbook (for the "User Manual")
>    * Templates (such Text::Template or Template::Toolkit)
>    * Black box testing (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black-box_testing)
>    * Input sanitation.
>    * Possibly some Make or some shell code (sh or bash).
>    * Basic gnuplot knowledge (format of data files etc.)
>  * What the student will learn:
>      You will learn methods to reduce the workload when dealing massive
>      data sets (via incremental runs).  You will learn how to do black
>      box testing on "non-trivial" black boxes.

That's a lot of desired skills. I'd cut down the list, and move some of
them to the what will learn section. Make and basic shell is something
that can be learned in an afternoon, so while it's great if a student
already knows make and/or shell, I wouldn't say it's explicitly desired.

Desired has a "you HAVE to know this" sound to it, even if it doesn't
mean that, so a short list of must have skills is less discouraging
towards a student.

My proposed list would be:

* Desirable skills:
  * Perl
  * Black box testing, or willingness to learn it (<link>)
  * Ability to write documentation (docbook and POD knowledge is great,
    but can be learned along the way)
  * Familiarity with any templating language (Text::Template, or
    Template::Toolkit, or something else)

* What the student will learn:
  You will learn methods to reduce the workload when dealing with
  massive data sets (via incremental runs), while working on a tool that
  is run on the whole Debian archive and is a key piece of our QA
  toolset. You will be able to learn how to do black box testing on
  "non-trivial" black boxes.

  Along the way, there's a possibility to learn a lot about Perl, the
  POD and docbook documentation formats, gnuplot, make and shell.

Something like that... to make it more attractive to students (*I* find
it attractive as it is, but I don't have to be persuaded :).

-- 
|8]




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