Participating in Google Summer of Code with gRPC

[Kailash Sethuraman]

Hi Students!

We wanted to share more information about how gRPC will be participating in Google Summer of Code.  We will adhere to this timeline: https://developers.google.com/open-source/gsoc/timeline. Please take note of the deadlines and submit your proposal on time.

We will be selecting projects based on the proposals we receive from you as per the Google Summer of Code guidelines. You can find some good tips on authoring an effective proposal here: http://write.flossmanuals.net/gsocstudentguide/writing-a-proposal/. The proposal should demonstrate as much as possible that you, as a student, are capable of achieving your objective.

We urge you to participate in gRPC prior to the acceptance of your proposal, either in general or exploring the topic in which you are interested. Talk to us on the mailing list and share your questions and feedback.

A few words about our ideas page - https://github.com/grpc/grpc/blob/master/summerofcode/ideas.md

- They are just our own ideas, we welcome your ideas too!

- We will consider ideas in all programming environments currently supported by gRPC.

- It is perfectly fine for you to explore a popular idea, even if there are others who are interested in it.

Thanks,

Nathaniel and Kailash

[Srihari Radhakrishna]

Hi, 

I am just getting started with contributions to open source and I wish to submit a proposal for a project with GSoC 2017. Is gRPC participating in GSoC 2017 and if so, I would like to know what are some good resources to get started with contributing to gRPC.

Thanks,

Srihari.

[Kailash Sethuraman]

Hi Srihari,

As I just mentioned in another thread, gRPC is planning to participate in Google Summer of Code in 2017. We are currently working on the organization application and a short list of projects to submit to GSoC.

Once we are accepted as a participating organization[1], we will be putting up an ideas list for consideration by students.

If all goes well, as per the timelines published by GSoC[2], we will put up the ideas list and discuss with students between Feb 27-Mar 20.

Reference 

[1] https://summerofcode.withgoogle.com/how-it-works/ 

[2] https://developers.google.com/open-source/gsoc/timeline

Now, if you are interested in helping out with  gRPC outside of the structured summer of code program, there are many ways to get familiarized with our code base and get started! 

We currently have 4 main repositories for gRPC in  github.com/grpc - grpc/grpc (for C core and all other languages that build on it),  grpc/grpc-java (java codebase),

grpc/grpc-go (go codebase) and grpc/grpc.github.io (the site for grpc.io).

I would first recommend that you start with understanding the core concepts by looking into our docs/guides and quickstarts in http://grpc.io, once you are familiar, you can contribute gRPC by tackling issues that we have identified as good areas of contribution, especially as starting points.

 

We try to add the "help wanted" label on triaged issues that we really want help on, so pick a repo and walk through the issues marked with that label, and try to send PRs that fix them. This is a good way to start as it helps you familiarize you to the code base, development cycle and the process to land changes into the project. Doing a few of these sets you up to make larger changes.

Another avenue to help is on grpc/grpc.github.io -- this hosts our site. Any fixes, improvements here would be very welcome, as the documentation makes our project more accessible to users, so do not underestimate the impact you can make here! 

In addition to all of the above, gRPC is an RPC framework and there is a lot of tooling that can be built around it, so if you have a project that builds on gRPC and will be useful to others, that itself will be a good contribution. See https://github.com/grpc-ecosystem for some curated examples.

Hope this helps!

[Srihari Radhakrishna]

Thanks a lot, Kailash.

Srihari.