[Scummvm-devel] GSoC in 2018?

Wed Jan 17 22:17:06 CET 2018

Thanks everybody for your answers.

I'm sorry I failed to provide context for this discussion. Recently, I've
been
trying to make improvements to the "core" part of ScummVM (mostly the GUI
and
the event system). Most of the existing code I've been finding hard to
improve
upon came from the GSoC program.

I've been wondering if perhaps the existing process could be improved to
help
students produce code that is easier to maintain. Hence my email from
yesterday.

Arnaud and Eugene made it abundantly clear that the current process was
already
geared towards transparency and quality. Maybe things could still go
further.

Regarding transparency, I failed to remember about the blogs. Perhaps it's
just
my mistake. Perhaps it's an indication that something could be improved.
I personally would very much prefer if the content produced for the blog
posts
was used as the description for a pull request for the associated work
instead.
That way it would work both as a recap of the student's achievements for
the team members and as a support for code review.

Working towards having the student's code merged early seems like a worthy
goal
to me. Thierry and Arnaud had concern about merging code too early. I
suggest
each GSoC project could have a branch in the main ScummVM repository that
is kept up to date with master and works like master for the student.
The student submits their pull requests to their gsoc branch instead of
master.
At the end of the GSoC if the project as a whole is successful, the branch
is
merged to master. That way the work gains more visibility than being in a
student's private fork.

I still think there is an issue with the design part of the work. Blog
posts,
pull requests and code pushed on the student's fork come too late to have
a proper discussion about how things are going to be done.
During the initial phase of GSoC the student is IMO not yet familiar enough
with
the code base. Furthermore, design needs to evolve as the student's
understanding of the task improves. Which is why I was suggesting iterative
and public design around small tasks.

Regarding code the quality, it's good to hear the work is already split into
small tasks and the schedule can be changed without consequences.
I'd really like to see the small tasks being used as a unit for code review.
In my experience producing large amounts of pull requests is not an issue.
Small pull requests are easy to review. When working on a larger feature,
the pull request branches can target the main feature branch so only the new
changes are visible.

2018-01-17 21:41 GMT+01:00 Paweł Kołodziejski <aquadran at xtr.net.pl>:

> I’m not fully sure what is current status of Stark engine in ResidualVM,
> but might be considered as task for GSOC.
> Implements gaps and fixing bugs in engine. bgK what do you think? And if
> you are interesting with mentoring this.
>
> Pawel
>
>
> On 16 Jan 2018, at 15:00, Arnaud Boutonné <strangerke at scummvm.org> wrote:
>
> Summary:
>
> Tasks with mentors:
> - AGS (Sev)
> - ICB (ResidualVM - Somaen / Aquadran)
> - Supernova (ScummVM - Strangerke / Criezy)
> - TTS (ScummVM - Criezy)
> - Wintermute 3D (ResidualVM - Somaen / Aquadran)
>
> Mentors available:
> - Aquadran
> - Criezy
> - Sev
> - Somaen
> - Strangerke
>
>
>
> On Tue, Jan 16, 2018 at 2:42 PM, Thierry Crozat <criezy at scummvm.org>
> wrote:
>
>> Hi Arnaud,
>>
>> I can also help with mentoring and admin this year.
>>
>> I would be comfortable mentoring the Supernova or a TTS task. I might not
>> be very comfortable with it but I would be ready to mentor the OpenGL
>> shader task (I would really like this to be finally implemented).
>>
>>
>> Thierry
>>
>> On 16 January 2018 at 12:21, Arnaud Boutonné <strangerke at scummvm.org>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> OK, so if I summarize the current answers:
>>>
>>> Tasks with mentors:
>>> - ICB (ResidualVM - Somaen / Aquadran)
>>> - Supernova (ScummVM - Strangerke)
>>> - Wintermute 3D (ResidualVM - Somaen / Aquadran)
>>>
>>> Mentors available:
>>> - Aquadran
>>> - Somaen
>>> - Strangerke
>>>
>>> Anybody else?
>>>
>>> Arnaud
>>>
>>>
>>> On Tue, Jan 16, 2018 at 12:25 PM, Paweł Kołodziejski <
>>> aquadran at xtr.net.pl> wrote:
>>>
>>>> I can mentor ICB task and wintermute 3d if needed.
>>>>
>>>> Pawel
>>>>
>>>> On 2018-01-16 10:43, Arnaud Boutonné wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> Hi somaen
>>>>>
>>>>> Would you have some time to mentor it? T0by, the same question to you?
>>>>>
>>>>> btw, who could mentor the ICB task?
>>>>>
>>>>> Best regards,
>>>>> Arnaud
>>>>>
>>>>> On Tue, Jan 16, 2018 at 10:40 AM, Einar Johan Trøan Sømåen
>>>>> <einarjohants at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>> There is also the wintermute 3D task, which I still think is a decent
>>>>>> one. So I'm in favour.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Einar Johan
>>>>>>
>>>>>> tir. 16. jan. 2018 kl. 10.13 skrev Arnaud Boutonné <
>>>>>> strangerke at scummvm.org>:
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Hey Pawel :)
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Congratulations for the release of v0.3 ... And also, it shows
>>>>>>> activity on the project which is really cool.
>>>>>>> Did someone consider the Penumbra engine, yet? :)
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> See you
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Arnaud
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> On Tue, Jan 16, 2018 at 9:21 AM, Paweł Kołodziejski <
>>>>>>> aquadran at xtr.net.pl> wrote:
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> ICB for ResidualVM is still valid task.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> On 16 Jan 2018, at 09:18, Arnaud Boutonné <strangerke at scummvm.org>
>>>>>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> Hi Eugene, hi everybody
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> I'm in favor of applying this year again. We can work on last
>>>>>>>>> year's list (http://wiki.scummvm.org/index
>>>>>>>>> .php/Summer_of_Code/GSoC_Ideas_2017 [2]). Sludge engine and
>>>>>>>>> Supernova's first game are done, and the 2nd supernova game can be used as
>>>>>>>>> a task.
>>>>>>>>> Of course, we have to check the list in order to remove the
>>>>>>>>> obsolete one (typically, I have no idea of the status of ICB for
>>>>>>>>> ResidualVM, and I don't know if it's still an option to get a student for
>>>>>>>>> Director).
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> My favorite task is the one about shaders/scalers. It's been lying
>>>>>>>>> there foreever, and could give us a really nice outcome.
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> The deadline for org application forms is in 2 weeks, so we really
>>>>>>>>> have to work on that if I'm not the only one thinking it's a good idea.
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> Oh, and I volunteer to be a mentor this year.
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> Do you want me to spend some time at looking if there are other
>>>>>>>>> low-hanging fruits we could find for potential mentors (like existing
>>>>>>>>> engines lying around, or source code availability for other games?)
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> Best regards,
>>>>>>>>> Arnaud
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> On Tue, Jan 16, 2018 at 12:40 AM, Eugene Sandulenko <
>>>>>>>>> sev at scummvm.org> wrote:
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> Hi Team,
>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>> Should we apply for the GSoC this year? Do we have enough ideas
>>>>>>>>>> and mentors?
>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>> Eugene
>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>>>>>>> Scummvm-devel mailing list
>>>>>>>>>> Scummvm-devel at lists.scummvm.org
>>>>>>>>>> http://lists.scummvm.org/listinfo/scummvm-devel [1]
>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>>>>>> Scummvm-devel mailing list
>>>>>>>>> Scummvm-devel at lists.scummvm.org
>>>>>>>>> http://lists.scummvm.org/listinfo/scummvm-devel [1]
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>>>> Scummvm-devel mailing list
>>>>>>> Scummvm-devel at lists.scummvm.org
>>>>>>> http://lists.scummvm.org/listinfo/scummvm-devel [1]
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> Links:
>>>>> ------
>>>>> [1] http://lists.scummvm.org/listinfo/scummvm-devel
>>>>> [2] http://wiki.scummvm.org/index.php/Summer_of_Code/GSoC_Ideas_2017
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
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>>> Scummvm-devel at lists.scummvm.org
>>> http://lists.scummvm.org/listinfo/scummvm-devel
>>>
>>>
>>
>
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