Introduction

[Harshwardhan Tanwar]

Hello everyone,

My name is Harshwardhan Tanwar. I am a 3rd year undergraduate student at the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, which is one of the most prestigious engineering institutes in India.

I have experience with multiple backend frameworks like Django, FastAPI for Python, NodeJS for Javascript and Gin for Golang. I also have experience in working with multiple databases like elasticsearch, mongodb and mysql. I have worked with dockers and aws ec2 instances as well.

Besides my background in software, I have an interest in research in various aspects using machine learning and computer vision as a tools.

I was introduced to the open-source world when I participated in Hacktoberfest 2022 and was amazed by the community of developers involved in opensource. This year I am trying for GSOC, which brings me here. I would love to contribute to MDAnalysis.

It will be great if I can get some guidance to start with or a link to the contributors guide.

[Rocco Meli]

Hello Harshwardhan,

Welcome to MDAnalysis!

Contributing to MDAnalysis

In the first instance, we recommend our User Guide for getting to know MDAnalysis:

   https://userguide.mdanalysis.org/

The User Guide contains a lot of information about MDAnalysis, as well as a section on how to contribute to the project:

   https://userguide.mdanalysis.org/contributing.html

On our GitHub repository (https://github.com/MDAnalysis/mdanalysis) we have several issues labelled as "difficulty-easy" and/or "good-first-issue", which are a good starting point for new developers.

For questions about the project we have several communication channels. Besides the MDAnalysis-discussion (about usage) and MDAnalysis-develop (about contributing/developing) mailing lists, we have a Discord Server that anyone can join:

   https://discord.gg/fXTSfDJyxE

By joining the MDAnalysis Discord Server, and by starting to work with the MDAnalysis community, you agree to our Code of Conduct:

   https://www.mdanalysis.org/pages/conduct/

Participating to Google Summer of Code (GSoC)

GSoC 2023 has been announced by Google and the MDAnalysis organisation decided to re-apply this year. Likely we won't hear about whether or not MDAnalysis has been selected to participate to GSoC until the end of February. Until Google makes a decision on participating organisations, there is always a chance that MDAnalysis might not be selected this year.

For the time being you can have a look at the MDAnalysis FAQ for GSoC from the previous year:

   https://github.com/MDAnalysis/mdanalysis/wiki/GSoC-FAQ

We will most likely have a very similar process to 2022. You can have a look at the list of Project Ideas we intend to propose this year:

  https://github.com/MDAnalysis/mdanalysis/wiki/GSoC-2023-Project-Ideas

Please have a look at the "Relevant Skills" section for each project to make sure you have the relevant skills, or that you can acquire such skills during the application process. Given the scope of MDAnalysis as scientific package for particle-based simulations, we especially value skills related to domain knowledge (molecular dynamics, computational chemistry, computational physics, ...) together with programming skills.

You can start contributing to MDAnalysis as explained above, and stay tuned for more announcements about GSoC.

The MDAnalysis community looks forward working with you.

Rocco