Re: Debian and the Google Summer of Code 2007
On Fri, Apr 20, 2007 at 08:56:10AM +0200, Joey Schulze wrote:
>Steve McIntyre wrote:
>> First draft - comments/changes please...
>
>Hi Steve,
>
>please check the descriptions of accepted tasks below. I wasn't able
>to find much information and the original texts were a bit inaccurate
>and clumsy. Please let us know if something went wrong in the
>descriptions of the tasks.
Hmmmm. It might help to fix various bits of syntax as well, that now
read quite oddly in English. I'm also curious to know where you
thought the original text was "inaccurate"; clumsy I'm more prepared
to accept :-P
>------------------------------------------------------------------------
>The Debian Project http://www.debian.org/
>Debian participates in Google's Summer of Code press@debian.org
>April 21st, 2007 http://www.debian.org/News/2007/20070421
>------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>Debian Project participates in Google's Summer of Code
>
>The Debian project is proud that it has been accepted by Google as a
>mentor organisation for this year's Summer of Code program with nine
>tasks in total. Google will fund these students to work full time on
>these tasks during their summer vacation from May 28th to August 20th,
>guided by active Debian developers. Several Debian developers will
>evaluate their code during this time.
Sounds a little stilted, tbh. How about (including Tolimar's
suggestion):
The Debian project is proud that it has been accepted by Google as a
mentor organisation for this year's Summer of Code program, with nine
tasks in total. Google will fund the students mentioned below to work
full time on these tasks during their summer vacation, from May 28th
to August 20th. They will be guided and evaluated during this time by
active Debian developers.
>The main focus of all student tasks is to create or improve utilities
>that assist developers to work on Debian packages and on the Debian
>release. Several tasks cover communication between software authors,
>who often are not part of the Debian project, users of the software,
>and Debian developers who package the software for the Debian
>GNU/Linux distribution. Other tasks will result in new tools that
>help maintain Debian systems.
Several minor issues in the English here, and I don't agree on the
"several tasks cover communication" sentence at all - only two of the
projects could count in that direction. You've also concentrated on
those 2 types of project, but make no mention at all of the more
common QA-related projects. I'm not sure this para adds anything, to
be honest.
>In particular the following tasks have been accepted:
The following student projects have been accepted:
> Jeroen van Wolffelaar will implement Mole, an infrastructure for
> managing information. This will help make Debian's vast supply of
> data easier accessible to developers and users. Included are
> package history and release statistics.
Fine.
> Ian Haken will write tools to use QEMU, a virtual machine emulator,
> to test upgrades from one Debian release to the next without having
> to re-install a real machine. This will help automatically track
> down possible bugs in upgrade cycles.
Fine.
> Ana Beatriz Guerrero López will improve piuparts, a tool that helps
> testing and improving the quality of package installation, upgrade
> and removal scripts.
Fine.
> Gustavo Rezende Montesino will work on a bug triage and forward tool
> that will help developers deal more effectively with tracking bugs
> and interacting with bug reporters and upstream bug tracking
> systems.
Fine.
> Cameron Dale will implement a BitTorrent proxy for the package
> archive. He will use the BitTorrent system to work effectively with
> large, constantly updating collections of files such as the Debian
> archive
It's not clear why you've rewritten this, losing the point of "expand
on the BitTorrent application".
> Pavel Vinogradov will develop a status monitoring system for
> security management of clusters of Debian systems. It is based on
> the OVAL language, which provides a uniform mechanism to report on
> and control security centrally.
Fine.
> Margarita Manterola Rivero will work on a web-based user interface
> to the Debian bug tracking system which will make it easier for
> users to report, check and manipulate bugs.
Fine.
> Martín Hernán Ferrari will implement a modular CD and DVD image
> testing tool that will allow automated testing of images as they are
> produced.
You've dropped the mention of the Debian CD team here, which is
key. We're not just testing any ISO images, but particularly Debian
CDs.
> Chris Lamb will implement a graphical user interface for building
> live Debian systems. This will improve and ease the generation of
> Debian systems that boot and work directly from a CD/DVD.
"ease the generation of" sounds weird in English: "ease" and "make
easier" have slightly different meanings in common use. Instead I'd
suggest:
Chris Lamb will implement a graphical user interface for building
live Debian systems. This will make it much easier to generate
Debian systems that boot and work directly from a CD/DVD.
--
Steve McIntyre, Cambridge, UK. steve@einval.com
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