All about GSSoC 2019

Before I share my experience, let me tell you two very important things:

1. This post is not about GSoC, popularly known as google summer of code. This one is about GSSoC(Girlscript summer of code). I have repeated this line thousands of time to my friends, teachers, family over the past 3 months!
2. GSSoC is not only for girls. It’s open for all, whether you want to participate or do mentorship. In my university, people still think that GSSoC is only for girls. So spread this news.

I already knew about GSSoC in my univ but how I came to know that boys can also participate in it is by luck. It was mid january and I was searching about how to get into GSoC. I read many blogs and then I started to watch some youtube videos. On one of the video comments, I saw this word “GSSoC”. I opened gssoc website to see the registration dates for my female friends. In the FAQ section, there was this question that immediately caught my attention:
“Is it strictly for girls or can boys also participate?” It was clearly answered that it is open for both boys and girls.

After reading it, I immediately applied for it. It consisted of very basic questions about you, your experience, why do you want to participate, what do you expect, etc.
Before reading further, just go to their website and apply for it. why shouldn’t you? It’s free of cost. you have nothing to loose and who knows, you might gain something !

Don’t be afraid of this “open source” word. even if you don’t know about it, doesn’t matter if you have never used github, or if you have never made any project. remember that GSSoC is for the beginners like you so that you can learn about these things. Let me tell about you about me. before GSSoC although I knew about github basics but I had never ever contributed to someone else’s repository(project). I didn’t know about pull requests or anything about working in team. and currently while writing this post, I am second on leaderboard !! so again go for it, partiipate and if you are dedicated you will learn a lot of things.

I got the acceptance mail one day before valentine. I joined the slack channel. For next 3–4 days, everyone is introducing themselves. All projects are announced and you can see details of each project on gssoc.tech website. Upto 28 feb it was time for community bonding. here’s my tips to get most out of this period:

1. Explore all of the projects. write down the projects that you are interested in. Next see github repository of these projects. choose the project that looks best to you and join it’s channel on slack(for each project they have a separate channel)
2. Most important, this is the time to learn about github. It’s very important that when the coding period begins, you know about these terms: commit, repository, push, pull, issue, pull request.
   These two courses by udacity are enough:
   https://www.udacity.com/course/how-to-use-git-and-github--ud775
   https://www.udacity.com/course/github-collaboration--ud456
3. Run the project that you have choosen in your own local machine. If you encounter any error, ask in slack channel. Mentors are always there to help you. just don’t be shy to ask.
4. Carefully read CONTRIBUTING.md file in root of repository. It consist of all the steps that you need to follow for contributing to this repository.
5. Before coding period begins, test that you are able to send a pull request to the repository. send a test pull request just to check your github skills. delete the pull request after that.
6. Explore the code base. try to understand the flow of project. ask your mentors if you face any problem.

Now that you have github skills, read contributing.md file and mentors support, next step is to start contributing to the project. All of the issues are labelled with level of difficulty. Each level have different score.
Beginner-10, Easy-20, Medium-30, Hard-50
I’ll suggest you to grab a beginner issue first. just write down the comment : “I’ll like to work on this issue.” and you are done. issue is assigned on first come, first serve basic. ie: one who comments first will get the issue. solve the issue and send a PR(pull request). mentors will check your PR, they will ask you to do some corrections(if any). add new changes and commit again. this cycle will repeat untill your code is perfect. then it will be merged and you will get points.

Remember to comment on only one issue at a time. otherwise it become hard for owner and mentors to track the participants. This is how the flow is: comment on a issue, start working on it, send a PR, wait for PR to get merged, only when it’s merged -> comment on next issue which is not assigned to anyone.

One very important thing: if there is no open issue, don’t sit and wait for mentors to add a new issue. Instead explore the project, run it on your machine, find a bug and create a new issue and assign it to yourself. If you don’t find any bug, try to find something that lacks in this project. Raise a issue that you want to add this new feature, if mentors approve it then start to work on it.

Sometimes the changes that mentors require on your PR will frustate you (to be honest). They will ask you to remove extra line, sometimes a single extra space, sometimes change name of your variables. But try to understand the reason behind such things. Rules must be followed in open source development because you are not the only developer. After you many contributors will come, so code is written in a proper style which is easy for everyone to understand.

so make sure that you solve as many issues as possible in this 3 month period. After all there are prizes and swags for top performers.

Inspired by this journey, I have also made my own project in Android and open sourced it on github. If you are also a android developer in kotlin and know about jetpack components, have a look at my project and contribute to it. currently it is in very young stage, soon I will update it with readme and contributing files.

Ni3verma/Code-Time

I am a android developer. I contributed to this project of swati garg. My mentors were Paras and vyankatesh. All of them are really helpful. At the time of writing this post, I still have 7days to contribute. I’ll update this story and tell you about what happens in the end, what’s the prize and swags that particiants get.

Follow me on Medium to get the updates and do read my other stories ✌️. connect with me on linkedIn :

Nitin Verma | LinkedIn

For those who are reading this in 2020 or after. Clap if I helped you, encouraged you or boosted you to participate in it. Maybe next time you will see me as a mentor or maybe you will contribute to a new project of mine. cheers 😃