Planet SoC -

Summer of Code Roundup

Dirk — Sat, 06 Sep 2008 21:10:41 +0200

The Google Summer of Code for 2008 has officially ended now and we’re happy to report that five of our six students have successfully completed their projects.Congratulations to Aman, Bill, Jared, Matt, and Sami. Good work, guys!Of course, this being software development, not everything worked out quite as planned and some plans had to be revised along the way. Still, we got some great results and so future Geeklog versions will, among other things, get a comment moderation queue, plugin installation through uploads, and a revamped search results page. And we’ll try to get these new features integrated a little faster this time around ;-)
In the meantime, if you’re feeling adventurous and want to play around with the new features, we’ve set up a GSoC repository using Mercurial that our students used to commit their code to. Be warned that things may be a little rough around the edges still. And most importantly: This special GSoC version is a dead end - we will be porting things over to the Geeklog mainline from there. But for playing around on a test install and to get a feel of what’s coming, it’s fine.Next up: Geeklog 1.5.1, a bugfix release for Geeklog 1.5.0. And don’t forget that you can help us with the planning of future versions by taking part in our current poll.

Install from backup coming to Geeklog

Dirk — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 06:43:45 +0200

Geeklog is getting a migration feature with a little help from BigDump.One of my projects for the 2008 Google Summer of Code is to add the ability for a user to install Geeklog from a previous backup. The goal is to make it simple and easy for you, the user, to migrate and install Geeklog from a backup database file.
From a developer’s perspective the import process is straightforward, at least for smaller databases. Larger databases pose a bit of a challenge because the import process will likely surpass PHP’s internal max_execution_time limit. We can’t use PHP’s set_time_limit() function, which is used to temporarily extend a script’s allowed execution time, because it only affects the runtime of the PHP script itself and so any database queries or calls to system() would not be extended. Additionally, there is the web server timeout which many users on shared hosting are not able to extend.Turns out Alexey Ozerov has done the hard work for us. His BigDump.php script will perform a “staggered import of large and very large MySQL Dumps even through the web servers with hard runtime limit and those in safe mode. The script executes only a small part of the huge dump and restarts itself. The next session starts where the last was stopped.”For now the migration feature only works with MySQL databases, since Geeklog’s databaes backup utility only supports MySQL.Look for this feature to be included in one of the next Geeklog releases.

Summer of Code 2007 results now in Geeklog 1.5

Dirk — Sun, 15 Jun 2008 20:53:59 +0200

I guess we’re a little bit late with this, but anyway: We have just released Geeklog 1.5.0 which now includes our successful projects from the 2007 Google Summer of Code, namely:

New user-friendly install script by Matt West
New Configuration GUI by Aaron Blankstein
New Webservices API based on the Atom Publishing Protocol by Ramnath R. Iyer

A big round of applause please for Aaron, Matt, and Ramnath for adding these great new features to Geeklog. And a big thanks to Google for running the Summer of Code program and making all this possible!

Summer of Code, Week 2

Dirk — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 22:45:57 +0200

So while we’re busy wrapping up the development of Geeklog 1.5.0, the coding period for this year’s Summer of Code has already started.The Summer of Code timeline was set up with the schedules of universitites in the US in mind. However, since several of our students are from other countries, some are still in the process of wrapping up their semester.So we’re off to a slow start for now, but things will soon be picking up speed. In the meantime, Bill is asking for your input on his project, Social Networking for Geeklog 2. Or you can read up (and join in) on the discussion about comment permissions for Jared’s project to improve the comment handling in Geeklog 1.x.And if you’re interested in what other organizations are doing: This year’s series of GSoC podcasts started off with Leslie Hawthorn (Geek Herder Extraordinaire at Google) interviewing some Pythonistas.

Summer of Code, Week 2

Dirk — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 22:45:57 +0200

So while we’re busy wrapping up the development of Geeklog 1.5.0, the coding period for this year’s Summer of Code has already started.The Summer of Code timeline was set up with the schedules of universities in the US in mind. However, since several of our students are from other countries, some are still in the process of wrapping up their semester.So we’re off to a slow start for now, but things will soon be picking up speed. In the meantime, Bill is asking for your input on his project, Social Networking for Geeklog 2. Or you can read up (and join in) on the discussion about comment permissions for Jared’s project to improve the comment handling in Geeklog 1.x.And if you’re interested in what other organizations are doing: This year’s series of GSoC podcasts started off with Leslie Hawthorn (Geek Herder Extraordinaire at Google) interviewing some Pythonistas.

Summer of Code Students announced

Dirk — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 21:50:00 +0200

Google have now published the list of accepted students for this year’s Summer of Code. For Geeklog, the following projects made the cut:For Geeklog 1.x: 14f343560f08518337524482deb108ac

For Geeklog 2: e9f6d164b4779363d9d2a575d00a166f

Congratulations to Aman, Dhairya, Jared, Matt, Sami, and William and we’re looking forward to working with you during the summer.Thanks to everyone who submitted an application and our apologies to those that weren’t selected. If you have any questions regarding your application, feel free to contact us at the usual address.

Summer of Code: Applications closed

Dirk — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 09:30:00 +0200

Student applications for this year’s Summer of Code have now closed. Thanks to everybody who submitted an application!We will now review and rank the applications. Results will be published on April 21st.In the meantime, can all those who submitted an application please keep an eye on it? We may have questions or comments, which you may want to reply to.

GSoC 2008: Student applications now open (and some notes)

Dirk — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 11:00:00 +0100

Update: Google has extended the deadline for student applications by one week until April 7.Student applications for this year’s Summer of Code are now open! We’re looking forward to applications from students wanting to work on Geeklog. Please see our ideas page for details.If I may add a few notes and tips:

There’s no need to rush!
Applications are open until April 7, so take your time. We would rather see a detailed application on April 7 than a rushed one now. There are no bonus points for being early. Of course this shouldn’t stop you from talking to us now (to discuss your ideas, send in drafts, etc.).
“I’m interested in working on Geeklog!” is not an application
The application is supposed to tell us which project you would like to work on, how you plan to do it, and include a timeline. You may also want to tell us something about yourself and why you think we should pick your application. If you have any questions, talk to us before sending the application. Contact details are listed on the ideas page. Please also review all the extensive information that Google provides for students.
Look out for comments on your application.
Once you’ve submitted your application, please keep an eye on it, as we may have questions and comments.

(This list may be updated if necessary.)

Google Summer of Code 2008

Dirk — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 21:15:00 +0100

Geeklog has been accepted in to the Google Summer of Code(tm) 2008. After last year’s participation, this is now our second year on that program:Google Summer of Code (GSoC) is a program that offers student developers stipends to write code for various open source projects. Student applications will be accepted starting next Monday (24th). Students interested in working on Geeklog, please have a look at our ideas page. For any questions, feel free to use any of the contacts listed there. Also, don’t forget to check out Google’s extensive FAQ.We are very excited to be back in the Summer of Code and we’re looking forward to working together with the students. This is a great way for students to get some experience in working on an open source project. And for Geeklog, we hope to not only get some new features but also some new members for the Geeklog community.Update: Student applications are now open!

Summer of Code Roundup

Dirk — Mon, 17 Sep 2007 23:15:00 +0200

As you probably know, Geeklog was taking part in the Google Summer of Code for the first time this year. The program officially ended on August 31 and here’s a somewhat belated roundup:Four of our students completed their tasks successfully and their code has since been added to the Geeklog CVS. We are now working on wrapping up the development of the next version to get our student’s accomplishments out to you, our users.So the next version of Geeklog will have a new and much more user-friendly installation script, thanks to the work of Matthew West. Also, you will no longer have to edit config.php but can use the configuration GUI that Aaron Blankstein developed. And the webservices API, implemented by Ramnath Iyer, will open up new ways to interact with your Geeklog site, many of which have yet to be explored.Last, but not least, the chimera known as Geeklog 2 also made some significant progress, thanks to the article plugin, written by Damien Hodgkin.Thanks a lot to all of our students, the mentors, and the other members of the community who helped us out during the course of the program. The biggest thanks, of course, goes to Google for making all of this possible.
Those feeling adventurous are invited to try out the new features by checking out the current development version from CVS or download the nightly tarballs. There are still some loose ends and kinks to be worked out (and documentation to be updated …) so you probably don’t want to run your site with this new version just yet. But feel free to give us some early feedback, either here or on the geeklog-devel mailing list.