Revision as of 21:42, 8 March 2011

Google Summer of Code 2011

GnuCash will apply as a mentoring organization to the 2011 Google Summer of Code (GSoC). The following are the proposed ideas from the GnuCash developers for student projects. If you are interested in applying to the Google Summer of Code, follow the link to google and apply.

See SoC2007 and SoC2010 for our previous ideas and accepted students who worked on gnucash projects in the GSoC 2007.

Timeline

See http://google-opensource.blogspot.com/2011/02/mentoring-organization-applications-now.html . The timeline as copied from here:

• March 11: Mentoring organization application deadline.
• March 18: List of accepted mentoring organizations published
• April 8: Student application deadline.
• April 25: Accepted student proposals published
• May 23 - August 22: Students work on their GSoC projects.

Proposed Projects 2010

Here we collect projects which are proposed for students interested in the 2010 GSoC.

Other lists of proposed features are here:

• http://gnucash.uservoice.com/
• https://bugzilla.gnome.org/browse.cgi?product=GnuCash , then click on "enhancements" in the middle of the right column
• Wishlist

Migrate Reports into HTML templates

?????? Currently, almost all reports in gnucash are generated from files in a scripting language (here: Scheme) which writes HTML to the output. As a result, it is rather difficult to change the resulting HTML into custom requirements. As a new alternative, the "eguile" generator will use a HTML template with integrated scheme statements as input, and generate the HTML output from there. This is similar to PHP scripts on a webserver, which seem to fit well this kind of applications.

This project would try to migrate as many reports as possible from the old, script-driven approach, to the new, eguile-generator approach. Along the way, parts which are still missing might be discovered, and those will have to be implemented as well. On the other hand at least one eguile-Report is already existing, so most of the infrastructure is probably already finished.

• Student:
• Mentor: jsled
• Backup mentor:

Cutecash: An alternative GUI

???????? Recently, an experiment was started to re-write the GUI with a different language and toolkit: C++, Qt4, CMake. Can be developed either on Linux/gcc or on Windows/mingw or maybe even Windows MS Visual Studio. See Cutecash for the vision of that project and on how to get involved.

• Student:
• Mentor: Cstim
• Backup Mentor:

Delimited file importer

???????? (copied from 2007, still relevant) A CSV importer is the more direct way to say this, but general delimited file support would be best; think of the "Import text file" dialog in Gnumeric, and in fact try to leverage that same code, if possible. Supporting the core transaction profile is a good start, but "extended" import options (Invoices, time-spent, &c.) would be nice too.

There exists already a wizard-like GUI for accomplishing this task, but it is not yet finished and works only in very easy cases. The student working on this task can use the existing code as a starting point, which means there will already be some features to demonstrate and test. Eventually this feature should work with all sorts of CSV input files and extract the right portions of data, while communicating with the user in a reasonable way about the part of the data which cannot be recognized and imported. Ideally, each required decision should have a reasonably guessed suggestion, and additionally there should be a "preview" of what the user's decision will result in.

• Student:
• Mentor:
  • Cstim willing
• Backup mentor:

Register Rewrite

?????? (copied from 2007, still relevant) Finish the re-write of the GnuCash register to use the GtkTreeView. Make sure all the interfaces that use the Register (Transaction Register, SX Register, Invoice Register) can use the new UI.

• Student:
• Mentor: ?
• Backup Mentor:

Student Participants Application

If you're a student who is interested in any of the ideas above, please perform the following steps:

• Subscribe to our mailing list gnucash-devel and send a message to the list, announcing your interest and starting a discussion on how to work on this project. The idea is to find out from members if your idea is feasible in the timescales of Google Summer of Code.
• You will then need to turn your ideas into a proposal for a project and apply at google for your project. We are proposing the following template for student proposals:

Basic Information
-----------------
Student name:
Location (Home town, state, country):

Contact Information
-------------------
Email: 
Instant messaging contact details (Skype or similar):
Phone number (our mentors will ask for a few phone conversations, especially in the beginning):

Background/Programming Information
-----------------------------------
What programming experience do you have so far?
Have you worked on programming project(s) before, and which one(s)?
What project in GnuCash would you like to work on?
How do you propose to solve the problem(s) posed in the project you'd like to work on?
Have you ever built an open source package from source?
Have you ever built GnuCash from source?

If you're accepted we will also be asking for your proposed username and SSH public key for access to the subversion server. If you need assistance with those steps, don't hesitate to ask on the mailing list gnucash-devel as well.