Hi Mark, Sorry for the absurdly-long delay. The end of the semester was hectic. I apologize for the long silence.
I’ve been spending some time poking around the application services codebase, docs, and issues, and I think it’s a good fit for what I’m looking for based on its place in the stack, size of the codebase, and complexity. Here’s the syllabus, if you’re interested in my vision for the course: https://matthewlang.github.io/comp365/course_syllabus.html My current thinking is that I would like to do two things: - Use your project to illustrate topics from class through guided exploration. - Have students, in small teams, pick up an issue and (hopefully), ultimately make a PR to close it. I spent some time looking through your issues and have been trying to groom a set of things that I think might be tacklable by my students. Granted that I have not been able to spend as much time exploring your code, so my assessment may be off. Let me know if you have some time to set up a Zoom call and chat about whether you’re interested and to share my thoughts! Best, Matt > On Nov 17, 2019, at 7:24 PM, Mark Hammond <[email protected]> wrote: > > Hi Matt, > Thanks for reaching out - your course sounds like an exciting way to > get real-world experience for your students and is something we'd love > to help you where we can. > > We certainly do have a backlog of low-priority work. While we do make > some effort to flag "easy" issues, we don't really end up with many that > truly are easy. As a result, I'd expect many of the items in that > backlog probably aren't really suitable for somewhat "casual" > contributors - but we'd be happy to help you determine what you think > might be OK for your students to tackle. > > This team has 2 broadly defined efforts which might be suitable: > > * "Application Services" is our effort to implement syncing and Firefox > Accounts related services for Firefox products in Rust, with the aim of > using these components in all our mobile and desktop products. This work > is done in https://github.com/mozilla/application-services, and > interesting labels to get started with are "good-first-issue", > "good-second-issue" and "cleanups" > > * Sync/Firefox Accounts in Desktop Firefox. Desktop Firefox is our > "bread and butter" and has a sync implementation written in javascript. > It's pushing 10 years old so has a fair bit of cruft. Over the next few > years we intend moving the rust components into desktop, but planning is > just getting underway for that - and in the meantime we need to keep > Desktop humming along. Issue tracking for this is done in bugzilla - see > [1] for a very long URL :) We do have a keyword "good-first-bug", but > there are only 2 bugs in that category. We consider any bug with a > "mentor" set to be a "good second bug" - there are a handful of them - > see [2] > > Many of the issues you'll find will require a fair bit of context to > make progress on, which may test the patience of both your students and > you! However, if you have a poke around and can find some issues which > you think are suitable, then we'd be happy to help support your efforts. > > The other members of the team might have additional thoughts or ideas - > hopefully they will chime in if they do! > > Communicating with us via email is fine. While slack is probably better > in many ways, there's a bit of a process involved - > https://wiki.mozilla.org/NDA-Slack has some of those details. I guess it > depends on how many hoops you are willing to jump through! > > Let us know how we can help further. > > Cheers, > > Mark > > > > [1] - all desktop sync and fxa bugs: > https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/buglist.cgi?component=Firefox > Accounts&component=Sync&product=Firefox&resolution=---&classification=Client > Software&classification=Developer > Infrastructure&classification=Components&classification=Server > Software&classification=Other&query_format=advanced > > [2] - desktop sync and fxa bugs with a mentor set: > https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/buglist.cgi?list_id=14992010&resolution=---&classification=Client%20Software&classification=Developer%20Infrastructure&classification=Components&classification=Server%20Software&classification=Other&emailtype1=regexp&query_format=advanced&email1=.%2A&emailbug_mentor1=1&component=Firefox%20Accounts&component=Sync&product=Firefox > > > On 14/11/2019 9:49 am, Lang_Matthew wrote: >> Hi Application Services team! >> >> Elise Richards suggested that I reach out to you about a possible >> collaboration. >> >> I’m a professor at Rhodes College: a small, selective, undergraduate-only >> institution. This coming Spring I’m teaching an upper-level software >> engineering course. >> >> I’m curious whether your team would be interested in having my students >> contribute. >> >> Ideally I would like to partner with a team that has a backlog of >> low-priority feature work, bugs, tech debt/janitorial work, etc and wouldn’t >> mind some attention to clearing some of it. >> >> I want this to be as low-effort as possible on your engineering team; I >> would take responsibility of being a filter between students and you (to the >> degree you desire). I have experience in industry—I was at Google for 6 >> years prior to this fall, where I was TL of team building distributed data >> processing tools. >> >> Let me know if this is interesting your team; if so, we can start talking. >> I’m happy to VC if you want to chat in person, otherwise email/IRC/Slack >> would be fine. >> >> If we go forward, my goal would be to invest in ramping up to be a >> contributor over the next few months so that I am in a position to make sure >> your team’s velocity isn’t affected by interrupts. >> >> Let me know if there’s any interest and any questions you have! >> >> Thanks and best, >> >> Matt Lang >> Assistant Professor of Computer Science >> Rhodes College >> >> >> >> p.s., A little more info: My goal for the course is to have students come >> out of the course understanding the process and reality of real-world >> software engineering. I want my students to gain the process skills that are >> necessary for building real-world systems: deep debugging, integration >> challenges, testing and deployment, configuration management, etc. >> >> The class is 25 juniors and seniors with C++ experience. I had a similar >> demographic in a distributed systems class and got them ramped up to Go >> pretty quickly; I would image that Rust wouldn’t be a barrier. I would be >> dividing them into groups and overseeing them, and would filter any >> interrupts that would come to you. >> >> Here’s the course description if you are interested: >> >> "The software systems we often find the most useful and magical are also the >> largest and most complex to build and understand. In order for these systems >> to be reliable, maintainable, and secure, they must be built according to >> disciplined and well-founded methods. This course examines these >> methods—both in the large (defining requirements, system design, >> architecture patterns, software process, etc.) and in the small (version >> control, testing, benchmarking, code review, etc.). At the same time, >> students will engage in the construction of a large software system or >> feature." >> _______________________________________________ >> Sync-dev mailing list >> [email protected] >> https://mail.mozilla.org/listinfo/sync-dev >> > > > > This email was sent from a non-Rhodes email address. > Please do not click links or open attachments unless you recognize the sender > and are positive the content is safe. _______________________________________________ Sync-dev mailing list [email protected] https://mail.mozilla.org/listinfo/sync-dev
