Hi,
First to reply from before, I understand that getting into GSoC is highly
competitive and nothing is guaranteed. Regardless of whether my proposal is
accepted, I’m keen to continue contributing to Apache Tomcat and build my
skills along the way.
I wanted to share a brief update on what I worked on today:
I attempted to continue building the tomcat-maven-plugin locally.
Initially, the build was failing due to JDK compatibility issues. I
experimented with updating some configurations to improve compatibility
with newer JDK versions(jdk 17+), and with those changes I was able to
build 6 of the modules successfully, although the remaining two were still
failing after I tried changing tomcat8 version to a newer one.
In parallel, I reviewed some recent pull requests and then retried
building the plugin from a clean, synced version of the codebase (without
my local changes). In this case, all modules built successfully except for
the archetype module, which failed RAT checks for four files. After
skipping those checks, the build progressed further and only the archetype
module failed to build
The main issues I’ve observed are:
· Non-resolvable parent POMs due to ${rootArtifactId} placeholders
· Leading backslashes in groupId and artifactId values
At this point, I wanted to ask for your guidance: would it be more useful
for me to continue digging into these build and configuration issues until
I can fully resolve them, or would you recommend focusing on other areas
for now to first build a stronger understanding of the project? Moreover,
should I try adding license headers to the files which are failing the rat
checks?
Tomorrow, I plan to start by reviewing the class you suggested and
studying Maven plugin architecture in more detail.
For context, my current setup is:
- OS: Windows 10
- JDK: 25.0.2
- Apache Maven: 3.9.12
Thank you for your time and guidance.
Best regards,
Fatima
On Tue, Jan 27, 2026, 10:30 PM Mark Thomas <[email protected]> wrote:
> On 27/01/2026 08:52, Mark Thomas wrote:
> > On 27/01/2026 08:32, Fatima Qaisar wrote:
> >> Hi Mark,
> >>
> >> Thank you so much for your detailed reply and for offering to mentor.
> I’m
> >> genuinely excited about the possibility of contributing to Tomcat
> >> through a
> >> GSoC project.
> >
> > That is great. Just remember we can't guarantee anything. GSoC is a
> > competitive process both within the ASF and across all the
> > organisations. There are only a limited number of slots. I'll do what I
> > can to support you but I can't make any promises about whether the
> > project will be accepted or not.
> >
> >> I’ve already cloned the tomcat-maven-plugin repository, fixed a few
> typos
> >> in the README, and submitted a pull request. I also tried building the
> >> project, which currently fails — I’ll investigate further and report my
> >> findings soon.
> >
> > Great. I'll look at the PR shortly. I'll also check out the repo so I
> > can follow along with what you are doing.
>
> You'll see that I have been through and enabled dependabot, updated the
> dependencies, fixed any issues caused by the updates and merged some of
> the PRs.
>
> The PRs I haven't merged fall into one or more of the following categories:
> - needs a test case
> - has merge conflicts
> - includes unnecessary / unwanted changes
> - is an initial implementation Tomcat 9 support (we probably need to
> chat about how best to do this)
>
> #44 is particularly interesting as there are a LOT of changes in there.
> How to extract useful changes from this another topic for discussion.
>
> Mark
>
> >
> >> I’m particularly interested in the Maven plugin project. Could you
> >> suggest
> >> which technical areas or skills I should focus on early to prepare
> >> effectively (e.g., Maven internals, plugin architecture, or Tomcat’s
> >> build/deployment process)? I’ll also explore the other project ideas
> >> in the
> >> coming days to understand them better, and then I’ll update you with a
> >> concrete project direction.
> >
> > I haven't looked at the code so this is only a guess. I'd suggest the
> > following:
> > - The o.a.c.startup.Tomcat class. This forms the basis of all embedded
> > Tomcat uses. There are lots of examples in the unit tests of how to use
> it.
> > - Maven plug-in architecture is likely to be useful.
> >
> > Beyond that, I suspect you'll find yourself having to learn about lots
> > of different areas depending on where the bugs are. Something that might
> > help is trying to spot groups of similar bugs and tackling them together
> > so you don't have to research a completely new area every time you start
> > a new bug.
> >
> >> I am committed to a full-time GSoC project this summer. I can contribute
> >> part-time until mid-June due to university commitments, after which I
> >> will
> >> dedicate myself full-time to the project.
> >
> > OK full-time has an expectation of ~350 hours work on the project. The
> > important thing is that you can get at least that much work done in the
> > GSoC timescales. Exactly when you get it done is less important.
> >
> >> Thank you again for this opportunity; I truly appreciate your guidance
> >> and
> >> support. I’ll follow up soon with an update on my progress.
> >
> > Sounds good.
> >
> > Mark
> >
> >
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