Re: Like to do with ideas at GSoC2013

[Miguel Ángel Arruga Vivas]

Hi Sreedhar,

I also would like to participate in GSoC this year, but already I am
contributing to GNU Gettext, so I will try to answer your questions.

First of all, _Free Software_* community is open to anybody, so there
are lots of places where you can start to work[1][2]. Almost everything
in GNU is in C[3], so you should not have any problem with the
programming language because you already know it. Neither you should
expect to work with anything ending in .NET (other than dotGNU
project[4], of course).

IMHO, the best advice is: _scratch your own itch_, something like adding
a feature you love to a program you are using or fixing a bug you face
up regularly is the best way to start. You should start reading the
documentation of that specific project[5][6] and learning what the
source code really does. Also you should send a mail to the mailing
list[7], because someone could be also working on that or It could be a
really hard task. Also they could help you and give you valuable tips
and advices.

You also should know about version control systems[8], every project use
one, nowadays almost all distributed, usually git[9] and bazaar[10]. But
this should be the last step, even if you do not have any knowledge
about that, because you always could send patches[11] while you are
learning how to use project's one and somebody will commit them.
Nevertheless, you will find it very useful as soon as you are accustomed
to work with VCS.

Also always remember, Google is your friend. Even more in Google Summer
of Code. ;-)

D'oh! I almost forgot it. Also you some knowledge about GNU Make[12] and
Autotools[13][14][15] would help you a lot, because they are the GNU
building system and are widely used.

Best regards,
Miguel
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(*) I remarked Free Software, because GNU is not open source. You should
read an essay from rms at
<http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.html> that
explains it better than I could do.
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[1] http://www.gnu.org/help/help.html
[2] https://savannah.gnu.org/people/ (Some of that are spam, sorry)
[3] http://www.gnu.org/prep/standards/standards.html#Source-Language
[4] http://www.gnu.org/software/dotgnu/
[5] http://www.gnu.org/manual/
[6] http://www.gnu.org/software/texinfo/manual/info/info.html
[7] https://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/
[8] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revision_control
[9] http://git-scm.com/
[10] http://bazaar.canonical.com/
[11] Most projects use unified style for readability, see at:
http://www.gnu.org/software/diffutils/manual/diffutils.html#Example-Unified
[12] http://www.gnu.org/software/make/
[13] http://www.gnu.org/software/autoconf/
[14] http://www.gnu.org/software/automake/
[15] http://www.gnu.org/software/libtool/