GSoC Phase 1

3-minute read
debian • open-source
debian • gsoc

Hello,

Earlier last month, I got selected as a Google Summer of Code student for Debian again! \o/
And as Chandler would say,

Could I be any more happier?

Well, this time, my project is basically to write a linter (an extension to RuboCop). This tool is mostly to help the Debian Ruby team. And that is the best part, I love working in/for/with the Ruby team!
(I’ve been an active part of the team for 18 months now :))

More details about the project can be found here, on the wiki.
And also, I have got the best mentors I could’ve possibly asked for: Antonio Terceiro and David Rodríguez 💖

So, the program began on 1st June and I’ve been working since then. I log my daily updates at gsocwithutkarsh2102.tk.

Whilst the daily updates are available at the above site^, I’ll breakdown the important parts here:

  • During the first three days, I looked for a potential solution to the usage of git ls-files in the gemspec files. This has been the most problematic thing for us.

    • Apart from the option of using Dir or Dir.glob, the best (closest) possible solution (right now) is to use Rake::FileList which tries to respects the .gitignore file.
    • I stumbled upon this interesting gem, fast_ignore. It is the exact thing which we want to use but unfortunately, to use it inside other gemspec files, it should be vendored inside bundler’s code.

  • We had our first meeting on the fourth day and we decided to hold meetings every Thursday for the next 12 weeks.

  • For the next five days, I learned more of Ruby and figured out what to do and how to do it.
    If you’d like to know what exactly I did in these 5 days, I’d suggest you to read the daily logs for those respective days.

  • During the next to two days, the first part of the project, the GemspecGit Cop, was implemented.
    This cop will correctly determine the usage of “git” in the gemspec files and would tell the developers and the maintainers to replace them with pure Ruby alternatives with giving them a proper reason to do so. Much thanks to Dana for her help – she took out time to pair-program with me! 💖

  • We had our second weekly meeting where I finally told Antonio and David that the first part is already done (\o/) and we discussed some things and even pair-programmed :D

  • I took the weekend off (and something terrible happened) but anyways, I managed to get together some time and energy to document the source code and raised this PR #2.

  • And here I am on the 15th day :)

It has been a lot of fun so far! Though I am little worried on how to implement the next part of the project as I am not sure how to check only a particalar directory for some relative require calls.
But I think, that’s okay, somehow, something will work out. And I can always ask around others and check other cops to see how it’s done! ¯\(ツ)/¯

Until next time.
:wq for today.