Re: Epiphany and Sync (in relation to GSoC)

[Xan Lopez <xan gnome org>]

On Tue, Mar 20, 2012 at 8:47 PM, Chris Baines <cbaines8 gmail com> wrote:
> Hello,

Hello Chris,

>
> I am a student looking to participate in GSoC, I saw the Sync for
> Epiphany section of http://live.gnome.org/SummerOfCode2012/Ideas and
> was quite interested. For starters, do you intend to do the sync like
> Firefox and Chrome (in the browser), or to use Conduit, or something
> else? I really like the ideas behind Conduit, but when I tried a
> little while ago to do stuff with it, it didn't work for me...

I think part of the project is to figure this out in detail, but the
way I see it we have to main options:

- Start with something done just in the browser, like Firefox or
Chrome, possibly (but not sure yet) using the spec Mozilla wrote for
data sync (see https://wiki.mozilla.org/Services/Sync)

- Try to do this globally in GNOME as a service, that perhaps at first
could only deal with the browser data.
This will for sure be harder, since you'll have to convince a bunch of
people about how to go about it, but I think long-term it is the way
to go.

I think for a GSoC project probably option a) is the way to go.

>
> Also, with respect to the requirements, what proficiency is required
> in GTK+/Glib, I am sure I can pick up C quickly enough (I managed
> using C++ last year, with little previous experience), but I have
> never done anything with GTK+ or Glib?

I suspect most of this project will deal with low level code, so
knowing glib and libsoup will probably be more important than knowing
GTK+ (I'd expect the UI to be pretty minimal). I guess if you are
smart you won't have much trouble picking up the APIs you need to know
quickly. Since the Epiphany core is still in C knowing C is pretty
much a must, IMHO.

Hope that helps,

Xan