During the course of your Summer of Code project, you'll not only have to write code, you'll also have to spend some time on reporting the progress of your project, as well as advertising it.
This consists of the following:
- Update your blog every 2 weeks
- Keep your portfolio page up-to-date
- (Optionally) Discuss your project on gnome-soc-list and other relevant lists
Each of these is described below.
Promote your work on your blog
You should write a blog entry with an update about your work at least every 2 weeks. When you can think of one, it's good to include a screenshot or a relevant image to a blog post, as it adds visual interests and helps others know what you are talking about. You can also get into details about the problems you met, discussing how you solved these or how you still need help with them. These reports are an important requirement, as they will allow program administrators and the rest of the GNOME community know about your progress. Though you don't need to be strictly formulaic, you can answer the following questions in your blog post updates:
What have I done these week (Describe what you achieved / produced / issues you encountered etc)
What will I do next? (Try to give an estimate on what you will produce during the next weeks)
Looking back on the previous blog entries, how accurate was your planning? (Compare the work done with the planned work, describe why you managed to do much more / less than planned).
- What problems did you have? What cool things did you discover that can be helpful to others? Anything you think is interesting to the world.
Of course, you are welcome to blog more often too, and in freestyle!
If your blog is not on Planet GNOME yet, refer to the original welcome e-mail for how to get it added or contact the GNOME GSoC admins if you encounter any problems.
Keep your portfolio page up-to-date
Besides the biweekly blog posts, you'll also have to maintain a wiki page with all the information about your project. This should be one page with all the necessary information about your project, for those people that want to know more about it. Keeping your portfolio up-to-date is also an important requirement!
Include the following:
- A description of your project
- Where to find the code and how to test it
- Anything important you have made
- Links to your blog updates
- Anything else that might be valuable
The goal of this page is to inform people about your project and to make sure that all the information about it will still be readily available after the summer. At certain times during the summer we might ask to add additional information, such as your midterm goals. An example of such a page can be found here: Example portfolio.
If you haven't done so yet, you need to add a link to your page to the Student Projects page and create your page.
Discuss your project on gnome-soc-list and other relevant lists
Feel free to start any discussions about your work or other things relevant to being a GSoC student with GNOME on the gnome-soc-list@gnome.org , and also be sure to participate or start relevant discussions on desktop-devel-list@gnome.org or the specific mailing list for the project you are contributing to.