Summer of Code - Getting Started

GNU Octave is a mentoring organization for GSoC 2023.

Since 2011 the GNU Octave project has successfully mentored:

• 37 participants 🙂
• 39 projects 📝

in Summer of Code (SoC) programs by Google and ESA.

Those SoC programs aim to advertise open-source software development and to attract potential new Octave developers.

Steps toward a successful application

1. 😉💬 We want to get to know you (before the deadline). Communicate with us.
   • Join Octave Discourse or IRC for general discussion and to ask questions (Please do not use the bug tracker for general GSOC inquiries unrelated to specific bugs found with Octave.) Using a nickname is fine.
   • Show us that you're motivated to work on Octave 💻. There is no need to present an overwhelming CV 🏆; evidence of involvement with Octave is more important.
   • If you never talked to us, we will likely reject your proposal, even it looks good 🚮
2. 👩‍🔬 Get your hands dirty.
   • We are curious about your programming skills 🚀
     • Your application will be much stronger if you fix Octave bugs or submit patches before or during the application period.
     • You can take a look at the short projects for some simple bugs to start with.
   • Use Octave!
     • If you come across something that does not work the way you like ➡️ try to fix that 🔧
     • Or if you find a missing function ➡️ try to implement it.
3. 📝💡 Tell us what you are going to do.
   • Do not write just to say what project you're interested in. Be specific about what you are going to do, include links 🔗, show us you know what you are talking about 💡, and ask many smart questions 🤓
   • Remember, we are volunteer developers and not your boss 🙂
4. 📔 Prepare your proposal with us.
   • Try to show us as early as possible a draft of your proposal 📑
   • If we see your proposal for the first time after the application deadline, it might easily contain some paragraphs not fully clear to us. Ongoing interaction will give us more confidence that you are capable of working on your project 🙂👍
   • Then submit the proposal following the applicable rules, e.g. for GSoC. 📨

How do we judge your application?

Depending on the mentors and SoC program there are varieties, but typically the main factors considered would be:

• You have demonstrated interest in Octave and an ability to make substantial modifications to Octave

  The most important thing is that you've contributed some interesting code samples to judge your skills. It's OK during the application period to ask for help on how to format these code samples, which normally are Mercurial patches.

• You showed understanding of your topic

  Your proposal should make it clear that you're reasonably well versed in the subject area and won't need all summer just to read up on it.

• Well thought out, adequately detailed, realistic project plan

  "I'm good at this, so trust me" isn't enough. In your proposal, you should describe which algorithms you'll use and how you'll integrate with existing Octave code. You should also prepare a project timeline and goals for the midterm and final evaluations.

What you should know about Octave

GNU Octave is mostly written in C++ and its own scripting language that is mostly compatible with Matlab. There are bits and pieces of Fortran, Perl, C, awk, and Unix shell scripts here and there. In addition to being familiar with C++ and Octave's scripting language, you as successful applicant will be familiar with or able to quickly learn about Octave's infrastructure. You can't spend the whole summer learning how to build Octave or prepare a changeset and still successfully complete your project 😇

You should know:

1. How to build Octave from its source code using the GNU build system.
   • Read in this wiki: Developer FAQ, Building
   • Tools to know: gcc, make
2. How to submit patches (changesets).
   • Read in this wiki: Contribution guidelines, Mercurial
   • Tools to know: Mercurial (hg), git

Suggested projects

The following suggested projects are distilled from the Projects page for the benefit of potential SoC participants. You can also look at our completed past projects for more inspiration.

Do you use Octave at your working place or university? Do you have some numerical project in mind? You are always welcome to propose your own projects. If you are passionate about your project, it will be easy to find an Octave developer to mentor and guide you. Please note that for such a proposal to be successful it will almost certainly involve initiating pre-proposal discussion over at the Octave Discourse forum.

Adding regression GAM and kNN classification functionality in statistics package

Generalized Additive Models and k-Nearest Neighbor algorithms are two important tools in advanced statistics used for regression and classification problems, respectively. The statistics package, although heavily developed during the past year, still lacks any functionality regarding these two algorithms. The scope is to implement both the respective class def objects as well as the relevant functions in a MATLAB compatible way.

• Project size [?] and Difficulty

~350 hours (medium)

• Required skills

Octave, familiarity with statistical methods

• Potential mentors

Andreas Bertsatos

Custom re-implementation of the texi2html (v.1.82) command line tool

Implement a custom perl script to relax the dependency of the pkg-octave-doc package on texi2html (v.1.82) command line tool, which is no longer maintained or further developed but also not readily available to all linux distributions. This will also help improve the speed of pkg-octave-doc processing large packages, which contain specific tags (such as @math) which are currently handled within Octave code.

• Project size [?] and Difficulty

~350 hours (hard)

• Required skills

Perl, Octave, Texinfo, HTML

• Potential mentors

Andreas Bertsatos

A function search index website for all Octave Packages

Develop additional functionality for the pkg-octave-doc package than will search all pkg compatible packages listed in Octave Packages, enumerate the available functions from each package, and built a website with search capability that will list all functions’ names and their respective package(s). The function list should have links corresponding to their documentation or/and source code. This could be integrated in the current Octave Packages website and the implemented tool can be part of the current CI (used for testing a package before merging a new release) and automatically update the website with every package release. Alternatively, it can be a stand alone service which will monitor Octave Packages repository for any merged PR and update the function search index website accordingly.

• Project size [?] and Difficulty

~350 hours (medium)

• Required skills

Octave, Bootstap 5 framework

• Potential mentors

Andreas Bertsatos

Project sizes

Since GSoC 2022 there exist two project sizes:

• ~175 hours (~12 weeks, Jun 13 - Sept 12)
• ~350 hours (~22 weeks, Jun 13 - Nov 21)

See also

• https://summerofcode.withgoogle.com/
• GSoC Student Guide
• GSoC Mentor Guide
• GSoC Timeline