On 10/04/15 02:27, Steve Dougherty wrote: > Google Summer of Code didn't work out for us, but maybe we can have a > Freenet Summer of Toad? It's not certain yet, but Matthew might be > interested in working 35-hour weeks over the summer for FPI. He says he > wants at least $6k for 8 weeks but preferably $10k for 12 weeks. Paying > this while maintaining current operations will require a fundraiser. Are > people interested in doing this? > > If we go through with it we'd put a fundraising bar on the website and > count subsequent donations toward it. It might be good to have a mark > both at $6k as the minimum and $10k as the entire summer. > > Last summer purge-db4o coming into review all at once was a formative > experience for the community. We've agreed that development must now be > put up for review and merged in much, much smaller pull requests along > the way. > > What would we want to direct this development time toward? My opinion is > that more code / features is not what Fred needs most right now. I'd > like to ask that Matthew document plugin APIs and work on packaging: > things like splitting freenet-ext, making a Debian / Ubuntu package, and > maybe even creating an official distro package repo in Freenet. This is > because for those utilities that already exist, Freenet is pretty > effective, but I have seen many developers give up when they see the > lack of documentation, and the lack of packages makes it harder to > install and harder to depend on. There are unofficial packages for Arch > and Gentoo, and freenet-ext being monolithic makes packaging Freenet harder. > > Documenting the API will also make it clear what is considered API, and > reviewing it can then suggest improvements. If documentation is > completed it could get as far as developing improvements to the plugin > API. It is mandatory that any changes be backwards-compatible. This all sounds like useful stuff. However it may be difficult to fundraise for as it's not user visible.
Also, plugins and packaging are largely areas that I have the least experience of / have tended to delegate. Which is fine, I'm sure I can dig up everything needed. But it's something to take into account. I don't anticipate finishing the debian package taking all that long, although it depends on how far out of date it is, and whether we aim for inclusion in experimental (but not with a view to inclusion in stable). Finding acceptable solutions for the components that generally get built via Maven is important both for packaging and for updating/splitting freenet-ext.jar (if that is indeed a priority); if we're going for inclusion, there will be distro-specific standards about that. Re documentation, I agree with everyone: Package, class, etc are important, but so are higher level guides. I believe I can write effectively when I put the effort/time in, and ArneBab's work may be a good start. Also unit tests are a form of communication IMHO, so worth thinking about. And I'm sure you all know I love darknet. There are lots of useful feature ideas on the bug tracker, and I suspect we need to have something user-visible to show for my summer's work. Stuff like the darknet enhancements can be easily divided up into smallish pull requests. Having said that if we want to credibly raise funds we may need to be more explicit, e.g. I should spend half my time on cleanups and documentation and the other half on user-visible improvements (darknet improvements, bug fixes, packaging, whatever). Also I'm happy to be involved in code review; there is stuff we still haven't merged from years ago, e.g. filters, much of it blocked on the Maven issues mentioned above. Would need to liaise with Steve, but I'm happy to take some of the load if he thinks it makes sense.
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