GSoC Status - Week 5 (Android Port)

[Dirk Hohndel]

On Mon, Jun 29, 2015 at 05:49:53PM +0300, Grace Karanja wrote:
> On Mon, Jun 29, 2015 at 5:02 PM, Dirk Hohndel <dirk at hohndel.org> wrote:
> 
> > On Mon, Jun 29, 2015 at 06:01:54AM +0300, Grace Karanja wrote:
> > > Hi everyone,
> > >
> > > This week I was working on:
> > >
> > > -Saving the dive details to XML
> >
> > This surprises me - maybe I'm not understanding what you are doing there.
> > Can you explain some more?
> >
> 
> Sorry I was not clear...
> 
> Since I had already begun the feature of opening local XML files, I had to
> finish
> working on editing and saving the dive details back to the file.

To be honest, I disagree. I find reading / writing local XML files
pointless on Android (and even if it wasn't, I don't see what part of this
would require special code for Android - unless you are talking about the
UI to create file select boxes... which is exactly the thing I DON'T
want the regular user exposed to).

> > > -Loading and saving dives using the cloud back-end.
> > >
> > > I am currently still working on the back-end part, and I should
> > > have the work ready for a PR this week.
> >
> > Again, can you explain what exactly you are doing there? Since AFAIK you
> > are still doing all this on the desktop and not on Android, these
> > shouldn't be problems... on Android I can see issues with libgit2 or other
> > parts of the code that haven't been tested on Android,
> 
> Yes we haven't tested all these on Android.

Read my question: "Again, can you explain what exactly you are doing there?"

Would you, please?

> > Have you discussed the problems with Tomaz?
> > In general, if you are stuck on something you should explain the problem
> > on the mailing list and look for support from other developers
> 
> My idea was to first come up with a working QML ui that, at the very least,
> load the remote dives and save back the changes.

That's a worthwhile goal. I'm not quite sure how that takes a week and
still isn't finished.

Grace, I don't know how much time you spent on Subsurface last week.
Things happen, people get distracted, but what you have explained so far
doesn't match what I think a student should be able to work on in a week.

It's possible you got stuck somewhere (I get stuck all the time), but then
you need to ask for help.

Tomaz tells me that you aren't talking to him, either.

GSoC is about teaching students to work in open source projects. And as
you know, this week is midterm which means we need to make the
determination if you are progressing as expected and if we feel that you
are likely to complete the project as envisioned.

A big part of working in open source is communication. I'd argue it's the
biggest part. You see all these discussions on the mailing list. Some calm
requests for help, some frustrated about things not working as they
should, some heated discussions where people just don't agree. That's how
open source progresses. That's how we figure out what to do (and if you
had talked to me and Tomaz about the XML saving you would have learned
that that's NOT something you should have been working on). And that's how
we figure stuff out that we can't quite get to work by ourselves.

So please

a) talk to us a LOT more frequently. Here or on IRC
b) explain to us (or at least to Tomaz and me) what you will be working on
   in the next few weeks and let's get clear on where you are relative to
   your plan

Thanks

/D