Re: Applying for lockdown editor writing in GSoC

[Rūdolfs Mazurs <rudolfs mazurs gmail com>]

Hello, and thanks for pointers.

The information for students is lacking in the sense, that this is a new
software, therefore fixing existing bugs or contributing to existing
modules is problematic. Should I write something for the pessulus as it
is, make some dummy application or contribute something to another
project?

Also, this is my draft of proposal (D means deliverable):

1) Understand the target audience

2) Gather requirements
2.1) Look into Pessulus features
2.2) Read Pessulus feature requests
2.3) Ask user for user input

D0) List of desired features

D1) Mock-up of the software, no functionality

3) Check if applications support the required lock-down features
3.1) If not, negotiate implementation with the developers

D2) List of results (application support status for each feature)

4) Start implementing functionality for lock-down editor

D3) First functional lock-down options

5) Write patches for other software if needed functionality is lacking

D4) Full lock-down functionality

6) Write basic configuration import/export

7) Polish the lock-down editor (i18n, basic documentation and such)

D5) Program ready for use

8) [optional] Make a configuration server and implement configuration
fetching 
   from a URL

9) Plan for expanding configuration delivery

It omits any time spent learning GNOME development technologies and I am
not sure about schedule.

Is there anything to add?

--
Rūdolfs Mazurs

P , 2012-03-26 14:59 +0200, Vincent Untz rakstīja:
> Hi,
> 
> Le dimanche 25 mars 2012, à 19:44 +0300, Rūdolfs Mazurs a écrit :
> > Hello all!
> > 
> > In the list of ideas for this year's Google Summer of Code I found the
> > suggestion to make a lockdown editor for GNOME 3. I thought I could try
> > that.
> > 
> > I have academic experience in writing C code and have done some Python
> > as well. I haven't written any GTK applications so far, but I think I
> > can learn it quickly enough. I have been using GNOME for 5 years now and
> > have administered an Ubuntu classroom, so I believe I can understand the
> > needs of the end user and system administrator.
> > 
> > What I'd like to find out:
> > * What is the required functionality of the lockdown editor?
> 
> The basic features that we want is being able to lock down features that
> are already ready to be locked down. See for instance:
> http://git.gnome.org/browse/gsettings-desktop-schemas/tree/schemas/org.gnome.desktop.lockdown.gschema.xml.in.in
> 
> You can run pessulus to get an idea of how this was working for GNOME 2.
> 
> Compared to the current code in pessulus, the following needs to be
> done:
> 
>  - handle GSettings settings too, not just gconf
>    Note that lockdown is GSettings is actually handled by dconf, see
>    https://live.gnome.org/dconf/SystemAdministrators
> 
>  - this first point likely involves writing a small polkit helper to
>    actually configure the lockdown. As an example, see what was used for
>    gconf:
>    http://git.gnome.org/browse/gconf/tree/defaults
> 
>  - use pygobject with introspection for the GUI, instead of pygtk
> 
> There are optional additional steps, related to making sure lockdown is
> properly handled by apps, or adding some additional lockdown features to
> GNOME.
> 
> > * What do I need to do to get this GSoC task?
> 
> We documented this on the wiki:
>   https://live.gnome.org/SummerOfCode2012/Students
> 
> Cheers,
> 
> Vincent
>