Subject: Re: GSoC 2016: applications open, deadline = Fri, 19/2

From: Matthieu Moy <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 12 Feb 2016 10:11:20 +0100

Lars Schneider <[email-masked]> writes:

> I don't know what level of Git development knowledge and what amount of time
> is necessary but I would be available as junior co-mentor :-)

AFAICT, you don't have much experience with Git's codebase itself (if I
don't count git-p4 as "Git itself"), but you've already been involved in
typical reviewing cycles (just the discussions on Travis-CI were a good
example), and that is something at least as important as knowing the
codebase well. It's up to you to decide whether you feel experienced
enough, but I think you are welcome as a co-mentor!

As a mentor, to me, the most important things are:

* Give advice on how to interact with the Git community. Students can be
  shy, and then repeating "you should post more to the mailing-list" can
  be useful. They sometimes make mistakes, and explaining off-list
  "there's nothing wrong with what you did, but the custom here is
  to ..." can help.

* Give advice on how to get useful code merged. My usual advice is:
  "don't be too ambitious", which translates to "git this part done,
  reviewed and possibly merged, you'll work on the bells and whistles
  later".

* Avoid overloading the list with reviews. Getting your own GSoC
  tee-shirt and letting the list do the work is unfair ;-). Off-list
  reviews are good to eliminate straightforwards issues, and then
  mentors should actively participate to the on-list review. That is
  probably what takes most time.

-- 
Matthieu Moy
http://www-verimag.imag.fr/~moy/