[tor-dev] Interested in getting involved with pyDoctor

[Karsten Loesing]

On 4/15/13 10:20 PM, Miłosz Gaczkowski wrote:
> Hi,

Hi Miłosz,

> I'd like to get involved in the development of pyDoctor
> (https://www.torproject.org/getinvolved/volunteer.html.en#metrics-pyDoctor).
> I'm not too bothered about whether it'd be through GSoC or not (i.e. I
> obviously wouldn't mind GSoC, but I'm no less interested in simply
> volunteering).
> 
> A few words about me: I'm a reasonably competent 2nd year CS student at
> the University of Southampton. Not a programming prodigy, but a
> reasonably quick learner with some enthusiasm for learning how to suck
> less. My motivation for doing pyDoctor is having an opportunity to learn
> something while producing useful code and hopefully becoming a part of
> the Tor community. I feel that this project is adequate for my abilities
> (both in the sense that I won't screw up and that I'll learn a lot while
> doing it).
> 
> If you would like to take me in, I'd be very happy to get started asap.
> Any pointers on the who/what/where/when would be very much appreciated.

Sounds great!  Welcome to Tor!

In theory, you can start working on this project right now.  The first
step is probably to understand what the current DocTor code (Java) does
and what capabilities the stem library (Python) may still be missing to
rewrite DocTor in Python.  See the links in the project idea, and ask
for more pointers if you're missing something.

For the GSoC project, you should come up with a project plan explaining
what parts need to be implemented, and you should suggest a schedule
that fits the GSoC timeline.  See the GSoC FAQ for details.  Bonus
points if you already have some code for PyDocTor in your GSoC
application.  Or you could write a patch for #8164 [0], which still
means writing Java code not Python, but which would show you're familiar
with the code base you're planning to rewrite.  Another alternative
would be to write a stem patch that adds part of the missing features to
write PyDocTor.  Lots of options there.  Damian is Tor's GSoC master, so
he might tell you more about your GSoC application if you have any
questions there.

Once you get started with coding, either as part of GSoC or as a
volunteer, you'll probably want to host your code at GitHub, Bitbucket,
or similar.  Damian (in his role as stem author) and I (as the DocTor
author) can then comment on your design or code.  Once your code is
ready for prime time, we'll probably ask you to move it to Tor's Git
server, and either you or I will take care of deployment on a Tor machine.

Does that answer the who/what/where/when?  If not, just ask!

Best,
Karsten

[0] https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/8164