With only 2 days till the suggested Google Summer of Code ‘pencils down’ date, and a week longer until the firm one, I’m using my remaining time to get some basic functionality working for my GSoC project. I’ve started creating a new extension called Distribution that will provide an API module which can be used to query extension meta-data. Later on it should also be able to do this for core, and provide archived packages that can be downloaded to your MediaWiki server, and directly installed. Initially I’ll probably simply be pointing to the ExtensionDistributor extension on MediaWiki.org, which can create archives for extensions on request. The Deployment extension which I started on earlier on will use data obtained via the API Distribution provides to display available extensions on your local installation. Right now I’m attempting to get the ExtensionDistributor working locally, so I can develop the Distribution extension alongside it, and confirm everything works. This will take some time as it uses Linux/UNIX specific commands, forcing me to use my Kubuntu install, on which my dev environment is only partially set up at the moment.
Hey Jeroen – do you fancy writing a short summary of your GSoC project (what it does, what it could mean for technical & non-technical Wikimedians, how long that might take) for:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost
A couple of paragraphs ASAP would be excellent (onto User talk:Jarry1250?). One way or the other, the Signpost achieves quite a good reach among the community, and it’d be great to have something for all the GSoC projects.
Thanks, Jarry1250
@Jarry1250: Sure. I think it’s best to wait until after GSoC has ended though, as at least one of the students will publish his work only then, and it’s nice to have at least one release to point to 🙂
Ah, my non-familiarity with GSoC is exposed 😛
What would be ideal is to have a round-up of a different GSoC project each week for a few weeks, but I don’t know how feasible that is. As you say, stuff needs to be in a fit state to talk about.
Do the GSoC projects talk to each other? If so, if you could pass the message on, that’d be great. I hate to have to run round bugging people on their own blogs ad infinitum.
@Jarry1250: There is no real contact between the students unfortunately. I’m not sure you can still get a hold of everyone to write some stuff after GSoC has ended more then a week or so back. You might want to poke RobLa about what you want to do though [ https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/mediawiki/wiki/Summer_of_Code_2010#Organisation_administrator ]. In any case, I’m willing to write a comprehensive wrap up, as I was planning to do so (here on my blog) anyway.