My Journey with GSoC’22

GSoC is an internship programme provided by google to introduce developers to Open Source community. Users can write proposals to projects which are listed by the several organisations. If the proposal get selected then the users can contribute for the project.

You can see the previous GSoC programmes in here. There are many projects related with several topics. If you are good at any stream there will be at least one project matches with your skills.

Let me tell you my story with the GSoC programme.

I have get to know about the GSoC programme in 2020. And I have applied for the GSoC programme in 2021 as the first time for the 52 North GmbH organization. Here is the proposal for the project. But unfortunately I was not selected for GSoC in 2021.

Therefore I have prepared for the GSoC 2022 programme as much as early I can. Just after the end of GSoC 2021 programme I have researched about the organizations and find the most suitable ones for me. After the end of each programme organizations put their projects in their company websites for the upcoming programme.

After picking up a project I emailed the respective mentors and get their advices. As well as I joined the organization gitter channels and introduce my self to the community.

Then I started creating the proposal for the project. In the mean time I worked on few of the bugs in the project and I was able to fix them. As well as I did error reporting also. After finalizing the proposal I got feedback from my mentor and modified the proposal accordingly.

At the beginning I have started to create three proposals. But with the university work load and my project works I had to keep attention to only one proposal. And finally it gets approved. 😋

On the morning of a day in May I got a mail from GSoC stating that I have been selected for Google Summer of Code 2022 🥰 My hard work pays me off.

After being selected for the GSoC 2022 I had few meetings with my mentors and we discuss about the current state and my approach for the project. At the end of the community bonding period I started my development process.

I was able to complete all the taks according to the proposed timeline. As well I got the feedback from my mentors. At the beginning also I did testing to ensure that my code is working correctly. Otherwise when the codebase become large it is difficult to debug and fix the bugs.

At the end of every week, I had meetings with my mentors and they asked about my progress and give feedbacks also. I was able to complete all the milestones which I have mentioned in my proposal.

Finally, after 13 weeks of the coding period, I was able to complete the project successfully. It was an amazing experience for me. As well as it improves my technical and soft skills very much. I need to thank my mentors for helping me throughout the GSoC period. They give me lot of instructions and advices to proceed. With those helps I was able to complete one of the most competitive competions in the world. Here is the final project report of mine.

“With hard work and dedication, anything is possible.” — Timothy Weah

If you are willing to participate for Google Summer of Code in upcoming years here are few tips.

• Try to start as much as early.
• Select a few projects that match your skills. (You do not need to learn everything about it. Just an idea is enough)
• Try to set up the project on your PC and ask for help in public channels if there are issues. (Most organizations have gitter channels where everyone can chat)
• Try to fix previous issues which are stated in GitHub and try to add a few pull requests. (Adding pull requests increases the chances for selection)
• Play around with the existing project and try to find bugs and report them. (If a project is about an already existing product you can do this)

From 2022 onwards Google Summer of Code is open to everyone. Therefore give it a try! 😉 Good luck!!