[Python-Dev] Core projects for Summer of Code

[C. Titus Brown]

On Fri, Mar 20, 2009 at 03:18:00PM -0700, average wrote:
-> > Summer of Code is ramping up. ?Every year the common complaint is that not
-> > enough Python core projects get proposed by students, and of course a big
-> > reason for that is often the only encouragement we offer prospective
-> > students is a link to the PEP index.
-> >
-> > The challenge is finding project ideas for them that could reasonably occupy
-> > them for the entire Summer and which the results of their work can be
-> > demonstrated. ?They're being paid for specific projects so "Spend the Summer
-> > fixing bugs on the tracker" is a no-go, and Google has outlined that Summer
-> > of Code is about code, not documentation.
-> 
-> Improve doctest by allowing it to be aware of nested test scopes such
-> that a variable defined at "class-level scope" (i.e. the variable b
-> defined at the class-level doctest """>>> b=Bag("abacab")""") can be
-> used in "method-level scopes" without re-defining it every time for
-> each method's doctest (each method would reset the given variable (if
-> used) to its original state rather than live mutated between
-> equal-level scopes).
-> 
-> Would be a great improvement for doctest in my opinion--both in
-> ease-of-use, and reduction of redundant, error-prone ("did you define
-> your test variable the same in each method?") code)--as well as other
-> benefits.
-> 
-> Appreciate any consideration...

Hi Marcos,

my primary concern here would be that the student would do all this work
and then python-dev would reject it for incorporation into core!  Plus
it's probably not a summer-long project.

If, however, you wanted to suggest a general "gather disparate doctest
features and integrate them, for consideration for the core" project, I
would definitely recommend posting that as a possible project on the
Python GSoC site.  I know that zope has done some good doctest stuff,
for example; the 'testing-in-python' list would be a good place to go
for finding out more.

Note, you don't have to offer to be the mentor to post it, but it would
help ;)

cheers,
--titus
-- 
C. Titus Brown, ctb at msu.edu