GSoC’22 Update — Coding Phase 1

Some time has passed since I wrote my last blog post. This is 4th week of GSoC period, and here’s my small update.

Check out my previous post on Google Summer of Code with GNOME Foundation.

Well GSoC’22 coding period actually started from 13th June, 2022, but at the same time my end semester exams started too. What a time to give exams ! Well because of that I had to take 2 weeks of break from my project. During community bonding period, I gathered resources and jot them down at one place, so as soon as my exams were over, I would get back to my project easily.

During community bonding period, I went through all the content written on the site and made a rough draft of FAQs section. I also checked out the images which we are supposed to include in the website to make the pages more relevant. Changed a few CSS styles, updated outdated packages and fixed a few accessibility errors.

Currently I am developing a form for the website which allows users to easily create profiles and add themselves to the website. Since the site is based on Jekyll, a static site generator, the challenge here was how to make it easier for the newcomers to add themselves easily and save the fuss of navigating through the file system, make merge requests according to content formatting standards, required fields and all sorts of stuff. They might even need to spin-up the site locally, to ensure the content looks right.

Well, do overcome this, there’s a little trick: by adding query parameters to a special GitLab URL, we can pre-fill a merge request against our repository. Well this trick easily works for GitHub as they have it mentioned in their official docs, but for GitLab, there’s no official documentation on this, or at least I didn’t find when I was looking for it. Though we can create new merge requests through API calls, this wasn’t a solution because we are using a static site generator.

The form I created did work, but now I am getting a little difficulty where I have to include dynamic content to parse over the .yml file and then get them in JavaScript code and create a unique link. For this, my mentor Claudio and I have set up a pair programming meet and hope so we’ll be able to solve this issue.

Also, GUADEC 2022 is coming, recorded a presentation for that. I wanted to attend in person, but due to a visa issue, I am doing so remotely. Hope to meet GNOMEies in future events :)

Will keep you updated in my next blog, until then bye 👋🏻👋🏻. Enjoy your weekend folks!