Google Code In 2014

This is the project page for the Sugar Labs application to Google Code In 2014. Sugar Labs community members: please feel free to add tasks below. We'll do an edit before final applications are due in late Oct 2014.

Message to potential participants
It is important that you obtain permission of your parents.

Es importante que obtengas el permiso de tus padres para participar.

http://www.google-melange.com/gci/document/show/gci_program/google/gci2014/help_page#eligible

Please see the Contest Rules for Eligibility and Registration process.

http://www.google-melange.com/gci/document/show/gci_program/google/gci2014/terms_and_conditions

Details regarding the required forms and paperwork are here: Google Code In 2014/Participate.

Also, you will likely need to set up the Sugar development environment. See http://developer.sugarlabs.org/dev-environment.md.html for details. Further information about contributing to the project can be found here: http://developer.sugarlabs.org/

Please don't hesitate to ask questions on our irc channel (#sugar on irc.freenode.net) or on the sugar-devel list: sugar-devel AT lists.sugarlabs DOT org

Why we are participating
Sugar is written and maintained by volunteers, who range from seasoned professionals to children as young as 12-years of age. Children who have grown up with Sugar have transitioned from Sugar users to Sugar App developers to Sugar maintainers. They hang out on IRC with the global Sugar developer community and are full-fledged members of the Sugar development team. It is this latter group of children we hope will participate in and benefit from Google Code-in. Specifically we want to re-enforce the message that Sugar belongs to its users and that they have both ownership and the responsibility that ownership implies. Just as learning is not something done to you, but something you do, learning with Sugar ultimately means participating in the Sugar development process. At Sugar Labs, we are trying to bring the culture of Free Software into the culture of school. So the Code-in is not just an opportunity for us to get some tasks accomplished, it is quintessential to our overall mission.

Some background from GCI
[See https://developers.google.com/open-source/gci/resources/getting-started]

Open Source Fundamentals
You can contribute without being a coder! You do not have to be a coder to contribute to open source. There are many different skill sets needed to help an open source community thrive:
 * Documentation: If you are a good writer and enjoy attention to detail then you might want to contribute by writing or editing documentation. Documentation is a huge part of a successful open source project. Organizations need documentation to help attract new contributors as it helps them see what the codebase looks like and where things are and what the plan is for the project.
 * Research: An organization may need help crunching numbers or sorting through pages of documents to better understand what the users want or need. There are many different types of tasks that students could work on that are very important to the health of the project.
 * Outreach: If you have an outgoing personality and like being around and talking to people, take a look at the outreach tasks. Outreach tasks often include hosting meetups in your local community or creating a plan on how people around the globe can host a meetup about the project in their local communities.
 * Training: You could create a YouTube video discussing a new feature of the project or maybe some basics on what the project does so people who haven’t heard about it can understand the project and get involved.
 * User Interface: User interface can include many types of tasks including designing new aspects of a webpage or creating a new logo for the project. It may also include various accessibility opportunities to help make the project easier for people who are blind.
 * Other: If you have an idea that may help an organization, reach out to them and let them know! Sometimes the best task is one that the organization hasn’t even considered yet.

Collaboration
Open source is not just about coding but working with other people to find the best solution. Being a part of the community is an essential part of success in Google Code-in. Mentors tell us every year that their best students were the ones who worked hard on their projects but also participated on IRC and helped answer questions other students had.

Quality over Quantity
It’s not about being the student who completes the most tasks, that only gets you to the top 10 to be reviewed, it doesn’t mean you will be a grand prize winner. We have had quite a few students who completed the most tasks for their organization yet were not named as Grand Prize Winners because they did everything solo and didn’t get involved in the community or think about the health of the project as a whole, they just kept completing task after task like a machine. If you actively participate in the community then you not only feel the camaraderie that comes with working as a team but you become committed to making the project better for everyone.

Some basics about Sugar Labs
For some basics about the project, see Chapter 4 of Learning to Change the World.

Getting started with coding
Sugar development is in either Python or Javascript.


 * You will need knowledge of Python and GTK (See http://python-gtk-3-tutorial.readthedocs.org/en/latest/);
 * or Javascript/HTML5;
 * and then the basic of Sugar development (See http://www.flossmanuals.net/make-your-own-sugar-activities/);
 * and to have a Sugar development environment running (See http://developer.sugarlabs.org).

Please note that you must run pep8 and pyflakes on your code before submitting your patches.

Getting started with GIT
Some knowledge of git is important as your work will be submitted to our git repository (https://github.com/sugarlabs). The basic mechanism is a pull request (PR), which is detailed in.

GitHub provides a tutorial (See https://try.github.io/levels/1/challenges/1), although there are many others as well.

Note that our bug tracker is http:bugs.sugarlabs.org.

Tasks
Note: This is our preliminary list of tasks. We can add more as the contest progresses.

Mentors: please feel free to add more tasks and/or add yourself as a potential mentor to an existing task.

Tasks must fall within one of these five categories: ; ; ; ; and.

Beginner Tasks
We have several tasks that are targeting people new to Sugar and Sugar development. This is a category new to GCI for 2014.

Documentation/Training
Tasks related to creating/editing documents and helping others learn more

For information about how to create help pages for activities

http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Activities/Help/Contribute

https://github.com/godiard/help-activity/blob/master/source/restructuredtext.rst

https://github.com/godiard/help-activity/blob/master/source/collaborating.rst

Outreach/Research
Tasks related to community management, outreach/marketing, or studying problems and recommending solutions

User Interface
Tasks related to user experience research or user interface design and interaction

Quality Assurance
Tasks related to testing and ensuring code is of high quality.

Code
Tasks related to writing or refactoring code

Sugar enhancements from bugs.sugarlabs.org
Each of these open tickets is potential task-worthy.

Sugar bugs from bugs.sugarlabs.org
Each of these open tickets is potential task-worthy.

Activity enhancements from bugs.sugarlabs.org
Each of these open tickets is potential task-worthy.

Mentors

 * NOTES TO MENTORS:
 * Please refer to Google Code In 2014/Participate for details regarding enrolling as a mentor.
 * Please add yourself to the list below.
 * Feel free to add new tasks to the table above.

Depending on the project, we will assign multiple mentors from our various development and support teams.


 * Walter Bender - also org admin for GCI
 * Gonzalo Odiard
 * Martin Abente
 * Mariah Noelle Villarreal
 * Gary Servin Cardozo
 * Rajul Srivastava