Re: Hello from new Outreachy applicant

[Gábor Boskovits]

Hello Lulu,

Lulu <me@erkin.party> ezt írta (időpont: 2020. okt. 9., P, 8:00):
>
> Hi Simon,
>
> > Have you already tried GNU Guix?  The package manager on foreign
> > distro?  The full Guix System?
> > If yes, are you comfortable with?  Feedback is very welcome. :-)
>
> I tried Guix on a foreign distro but ran into some problems with
> SELinux and locales. Do you recommend using GuixSD on a virtual
> machine, or do you think a foreign installation would be easier for
> development? I reckon a setup for internal development wouldn't be
> the same as a setup for the end-user. I think I might need to work
> directly from the trunk, so maybe I need to get familiar with
> `guix environment' for testing? I'd appreciate some tips on this.
>

I have always used a Gnu System VM or bare machine for development. It was
easy to set up, and made it easy to work also on services and system stuff.
The foreign distro way might be more lightweight, but if you can afford a VM I
would recommend it.

> > Well, last but not least, what topic you may be interested in to work on?
>
> I decided on the task to add a `guix git log' subcommand, out of the
> two tasks on the Outreachy page. :-) [1]

Nice, thanks for looking at it. It looks like a really good
improvement, but Simon
will have more info on that.

>
> Aside from that, can you tell me more about how this mentorship
> process works? Is there a regular schedule with meetings or progress
> reports or such?

No, actually nothing compulsory. We usually come to an informal agreement on
the meetings. I believe that communication is important and like to
have a longer discussion
(an hour or so) in the internship period. Other than that, I would
like to see two things:
1. some form of communication from the applicants every two/three
days: this should even come, if everything is going as expected, like:
"Everything is going as expected, right now I am working on..."
2. if there is a blocker of any kind, and you cannot make progress for
more than two hours: "Hello, there is a blocker, I can't make
progress, the problem is: ... Please contact me."
These should preferably be public communications, so that the
community as a whole can see the progress, and help in case of a
problem.
Just two notes for that:
1. two hours might seem a bit short, but the thing here is that we
would like to know about these, so that only a little time is wasted.
If you don't need help, or want to spend some more time on the problem
we won't stop you, but might give some directions to make this more
efficient.
2. It might feel awkward at first to communicate blockers publicly,
but it might shortcut a bunch of communication roundtrips. Guix is a
quite big place, sometimes I don't know how to tackle a problem, and
will need to turn to the community anyways. Thus making things public
will allow you to not block on my response.
One more final thought:
Don't get too stressed, there is nothing set in stone, and we can be
quite flexible, as long as we see progress, but please communicate
often, so that we know what's going on.

>
> [1]: 
> https://www.outreachy.org/outreachy-december-2020-internship-round/communities/gnu-guix/#add-a-subcommand-showing-gnu-guix-history-of-all-p
>
> --
> Lulu
>

Regards,
g_bor
-- 
OpenPGP Key Fingerprint: 7988:3B9F:7D6A:4DBF:3719:0367:2506:A96C:CF63:0B21