Hi Nicco, Hans Lo, Ville, Isaac, Mikael

Congratulations on being accepted into this year's GSoC!

Nicco, Hans Lo and Ville will be working on writing GEGL ops in GIMP and GEGL trees. Michael is going to work on the transform tool, and Isaac is going to make a node editor for GEGL.

1. There will be a short non-technical meet on Saturday, April 28 at 15:00 UTC where all of you can get to know each other. It will be about half hour long, in the #gimp IRC channel. You will be working together, so come on and talk with the rest. :)

2. Your respective mentor will do administrative work (such as submitting evaluations about you during the SoC). But all GIMP and GEGL developers will be interested in the work you are doing and will help and guide you during this time. Freely ask questions in the #gimp and #gegl channels. Someone will definitely reply.

Your mentor evaluates your performance without any prejudice. He/she is not a manager or boss. So don't feel afraid and speak freely.

What we expect to gain out of SoCs is developers who continue to participate in the project after the SoC is over. Those who talk a lot with us and make friends tend to stick around. :) So please do so! A major part of what is asked during evaluation is how well you communicate with us.

Two of the current mentors are past GSoC students themselves. :)

3. GIMP and GEGL are developed using gnome.org infrastructure. You need GNOME committer accounts, so you can work on your branch. It involves manual approval, so please apply early, so that you have it ready by the time the coding phase starts.

Go here for details on how to apply: http://live.gnome.org/NewAccounts

If you have questions or need help, ask in the #gimp channel.

4. Subscribe to the gimp-developer mailing list if you are not already subscribed. You can post longer messages, code fragments and other bits here if necessary.

http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gimp-developer-list

All communication among mentors, mentor-student and students is supposed to happen openly either in the #gimp channel, or on the gimp-developer mailing list. If you email your mentor, please CC the list.

5. Some of you may have other work that conflicts with your GSoC schedule. Please let your respective mentor know of what your availability is during the GSoC coding phase.

6. This is an important point:

During the coding phase, everyone will want to know how things are progressing. GSoC is a full-time summer job for you, so we expect you to be online every weekday during this time.

(a) The primary mode of communication will be IRC in this case. It is understandable if you cannot be connected to IRC all the time, but please make it a habit to connect daily and let everyone in #gimp know what you did in the past day.

(b) Discuss with other students what you are going to do next (esp. those who are writing ops). You can pick and share work among yourselves and work on the bits you like.

(c) You will be asked to work in one or more git branches. You have to commit whatever you have done every day to this branch. It is OK if there are no commits if no code is written, but if code was written, it has to go into the branch at the end of the day. This lets us know that there's new code, allows others to review/test it, and you don't lose it by mistake. Not just developers, but also some enthusiastic users may test your work and point out issues.

If you have trouble understanding anything (esp. things like git branches and such), ask in #gimp. :)

7. You should blog about what you're doing and show off your work. :) We'll talk about this when you have started writing code.

Kind regards,

Mukund