Some tips for GSoC
This is the first post so I'll keep it short.
Many people ask me for tips about Google Summer of Code. I don't know of any tricks but I can share what I think helped me get selected at Probot.
I actively participated in the Slack Channel.
While I was setting up Probot in my project I got to learn many things due to my silly mistakes. I had forgotten one step due to which I couldn't receive any response. Then a value of a field in the config file was wrong.
Eventually I discovered all the mistakes and got it working. To my surprise, many others made similar mistakes and they were asking how to fix it on the Slack help channel. I started helping them out relieving the maintainers from answering trivial questions.
I rigorously used Probot myself
One thing that I think is disliked in Open Source communities is adding features for the sake of adding features. Many beginners with the intention of contributions, make a mistake of submitting PRs for features well outside the scope of the project. Due to this the PRs are often shot down which is highly discouraging for beginners.
To avoid this mistake, I extensively used Probot to get an understanding of what it can do, what it can't do and how easy it it to solve the issues I'm facing once I get stuck. Doing this lead me to find some mistakes in the docs for which I swiftly made PRs.
Contributing to Docs is the easiest way to contribute in OSS.
I got early feedback on the proposal
After discussing with past GSoC students, I finalised the structure of my proposal. I think the important sections are
- Weekly Timeline
- Project Objectives
- How I'll implement the project
Once I perfected the draft, I asked the Probot mentors to review the draft. They pointed out stuff they'd like to see and asked for some changes. After I fixed all that, the date of submission was coming very close so I also took feedback from the past GSoC students. After applying what they suggested, I asked for a final review from one mentor before submission.
This was everything I thought helped me but be aware that I'm only guessing this stuff, they might have chosen me for some other reason.