GSoc 2018

[jimw...@gmail.com]

Hello,

My name is Chenxu Wang from China and I'd like to participate in the GSoC with coding for Django.

My idea:

I want to develop a tool which can make statistics of every single Django project. This tool will describe the structure of the selected project, list its apps, URLs, models and things like that. I also want to draw a GUI for it if possible.

Background and Significance:

About one year ago, I joined a club in my university which was developing a wonderful campus App. My mentor was going to graduate and i had to take over the project. I was a newcomer of Django at that time and it was difficult for me to master the project in such a short time.

It took me for a long time to understand the system structure and began to contribute to the project(Of course, the doc is not very detailed). Therefore, I guess it will be more friendly for a newcomer to a big project if there is a tool to show them the URL path, models, 

even views in a tree diagram.

About me and the Feasibility:

I am a computer science student and i have over three years experience of programming(mainly in C/C++) and over one years experience of Python and Django programming. I've developed few projects of Django and even tried to translate its document( but its too much so I failed to translate it all) and I am kind of familiar with compilers.

I think I can get main URLs from urls.py and track them to find out the tree of URLs(If there are other URL files in apps). I can get models in all models.py in apps(I can also track them if necessary). It might be kind of difficult to find the views,  but I guess track the URLs may help.

If possible, I want to show them in GUI in order to be more friendly to people who take over a new project especially if they are new to Django and I plan to show the settings.py in GUI too so that users can easily find and change their settings.

Any advice?Sincere appreciation for any suggestion.

[uri...@gmail.com]

Have you seen https://github.com/LegoStormtroopr/django-spaghetti-and-meatballs  ?

[jimw...@gmail.com]

I'm sorry to say that I haven't seen it before. But I notice that it only deals with the models and I want to deal with the views, URLs and settings too. Has someone done that before? 

[jimw...@gmail.com]

I've written my draft on Google Docs, here's the url https://docs.google.com/document/d/1hYVKrBJA1GIGYbkdlRG0Sq4GFIQnjw2Jb0QaFbsamLw/edit?usp=sharing 

Thanks for any comments.

[Tim Graham]

I don't think think the idea is suitable. It doesn't fit any of the three categories described at https://code.djangoproject.com/wiki/SummerOfCode2018.

[jimw...@gmail.com]

Thanks for your comment. I noticed that the third category is "Work on libraries that supplement or add new features to Django to ease development - South and Django Debug Toolbar are good examples of existing projects that would have fit here".  And I think that the idea enable developers to easily get the sketch of their projects can exactly "ease development" because developers won't get confused no matter how big the project is. If that's not enough, how about an automatic URL/models generator based on my ideas above?

Looking forward to your reply.

[Tim Graham]

I think GSoC students are much more likely to be successful working on an existing tool that has already proved its usefulness rather than trying to invent a new tool. In either case, you'll need to find a mentor who's excited about your project and can help you assess what's reasonable to do in one summer.

[jimw...@gmail.com]

Thank you for advice. Is that means that my proposal won't be accepted by Django this summer? If so, maybe I shouldn't submit it because it's meaningless.

[Tim Graham]

Correct. You'll have a much better chance of being accepted (next year) if you're already a contributor to Django. This will give you a better understanding of problems in the framework. Also, you're more likely to find someone willing to spend the time mentoring you if you have a solid track record of contributions.