[gentoo-soc] [GSOC 2012] Recruiting Webapp idea

[gentoo-soc] [GSOC 2012] Recruiting Webapp idea

[Gaurish Sharma]

Dear Gentoo community ,
My Name is Gaurish Sharma & I would like to work idea of improving
Usability of  Recruiting Webapp[1].

First little about me, I am a student completing my post-grads in
Computer applications. I am a polyglot who can dabble C,C++,Java etc
as its a requirement of my course(if you disagree, check my course
content[2]). However, my main interest & passion is web development &
that's the main reason I taught myself ruby & then rails, even though
its not part of my course curriculum. so, I am a self taught web dev &
 I want to work on recruiting Webapp as it aligns perfectly with my
interests. Further, my skillset matches the requirements do complete
this project. And I want to help linux grow, so want to help. Besides,
I am full time Linux convert from past 5years, currently running
archlinux which is similar to that of gentoo except arch can have
binary packages vs only source packages in gentoo. I know this because
have run gentoo in the past & I must tell you its a fine distro :)

Now,
 I know its probably late date for application(I came to know about
gsoc just today :-( ). so without wasting any further time, I want to
ask you about requirements i.e what all work has to be done on
Recruiting Webapp.

From the ideas pag, I was able to gather following requirements
1) improved usability:
2) updating for Rails 3.0.

1) Usability:
a) As you know, there are major usability problems with the app.
example:- answering a question requires 4 separate screens. Select
Category -> Select Question -> Click Answer it(small link, hard to
miss) -> Create Answer. I think it can be done in just two
screens(Category & display question).

b) the User interface is old, dated & just boring. We need a fresh theme.
2) updating to Rails 3.0:
Sure, I can do it. Why not update to latest version of rails v3.2.3,
any specific reason to stick with 3.0?

3) Fix Existing Bugs:
I looked at bugzilla, and there are plenty of bugs (37 to be exact)
that need love[4]. so we can fix those as part of project, if their
scope if not too large.

Now,
Please let me know if there are some additional changes required or
how changes in current scope are needed. so, that I can modify my
rough proposal draft accordingly. Thank you

Regards,
Gaurish Sharma
www.gaurishsharma.com

[1] https://recruiting.gentoo.org/
[2] www.rtu.ac.in/main/syllabus/MCA.pdf
[4] https://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?resolution=---&query_format=advanced&component=RecruitingWebapp

[gentoo-soc] Re: [GSOC 2012] Recruiting Webapp idea

[Petteri Räty]

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On 04.04.2012 21:18, Gaurish Sharma wrote:


> b) the User interface is old, dated & just boring. We need a fresh theme.

CSS work is nice as long as we don't spend too much time on it.
Usability is more important than looking good. In some situations they
of course go hand in hand.


> 2) updating to Rails 3.0:
> Sure, I can do it. Why not update to latest version of rails v3.2.3,
> any specific reason to stick with 3.0?
> 

The hobo plugin we used currently only has a stable release out for
rails 3.0. There does seem to be work going for 3.1 so we could target
that instead after checking the hobo timetable for getting 1.4 out
(which is needed for rails 3.1).

> 3) Fix Existing Bugs:
> I looked at bugzilla, and there are plenty of bugs (37 to be exact)
> that need love[4]. so we can fix those as part of project, if their
> scope if not too large.
> 

Some of the issues listed are bugs and some are more exactly enhancement
requests.

> Now,
> Please let me know if there are some additional changes required or
> how changes in current scope are needed. so, that I can modify my
> rough proposal draft accordingly. Thank you
> 

You should scope the draft proposal so that you yourself think there's
enough work to fill the whole GSoC for you. If think the items listed so
far are not enough for that feel free to ask for more ideas.

Regards,
Petteri


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[gentoo-soc] Re: [GSOC 2012] Recruiting Webapp idea

[Gaurish Sharma]

Hi,
Kindly read the replies inline:



On Fri, Apr 6, 2012 at 12:50 AM, Petteri Räty <betelgeuse@gentoo.org> wrote:
> On 04.04.2012 21:18, Gaurish Sharma wrote:
>
>
>> b) the User interface is old, dated & just boring. We need a fresh theme.
>
> CSS work is nice as long as we don't spend too much time on it.
> Usability is more important than looking good. In some situations they
> of course go hand in hand.
-->

I suggest that we switch to responsive design based on twitter
bootstrap[1], so that webapp is accessible from all mobile,tablets &
desktop browsers[1]. The toolkit has pretty good styling & is usable
by default, however. I would customize according our needs.

>
>> 2) updating to Rails 3.0:
>> Sure, I can do it. Why not update to latest version of rails v3.2.3,
>> any specific reason to stick with 3.0?
>>
>
> The hobo plugin we used currently only has a stable release out for
> rails 3.0. There does seem to be work going for 3.1 so we could target
> that instead after checking the hobo timetable for getting 1.4 out
> (which is needed for rails 3.1).
--->

v3.0 vs v3.1 -- There are a few backwards-incompatible changes in
Rails 3.1 which affect the future upgrade path if we choose to develop
in 3.0 only. rincipal among these are a new convention for the
placement of images, stylesheets, and JavaScript files—collectively
known as assets—and a change in the default JavaScript library from
Prototype to jQuery. Further, 3.1 has cool features like Asset
pipeline,Reversible migrations which we would miss out we stick with
3.0.

However,
With every new Rails release, there is a time delay while the rest of
the ecosystem catches up. Now, hebo severely lagging behind. so I
propose, we dump hobo & we writte the app as per the requirement while
importing existing data on latest version of rails.

The reason I want to dump hobo is:
1) it is lagging behind in support for latest releases
2) It is not core rails.
3) Hobo is good for protying but for apps that are required to go into
production like recruiting app, traditional development model is
preffered

I hope this makes sense.




> You should scope the draft proposal so that you yourself think there's
> enough work to fill the whole GSoC for you. If think the items listed so
> far are not enough for that feel free to ask for more ideas.
-->

Sure, please let know what more than I can do


--Gaurish Sharma


[1] http://twitter.github.com/bootstrap/

Re: [gentoo-soc] Re: [GSOC 2012] Recruiting Webapp idea

[Petteri Räty]

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On 05.04.2012 23:08, Gaurish Sharma wrote:
> Hi,
> Kindly read the replies inline:
> 

Where else? :) In Gentoo mailing lists every should be responding inline.

> 
> 
> On Fri, Apr 6, 2012 at 12:50 AM, Petteri Räty <betelgeuse@gentoo.org> wrote:
>> On 04.04.2012 21:18, Gaurish Sharma wrote:
>>
>>
>>> b) the User interface is old, dated & just boring. We need a fresh theme.
>>
>> CSS work is nice as long as we don't spend too much time on it.
>> Usability is more important than looking good. In some situations they
>> of course go hand in hand.
> -->
> 
> I suggest that we switch to responsive design based on twitter
> bootstrap[1], so that webapp is accessible from all mobile,tablets &
> desktop browsers[1]. The toolkit has pretty good styling & is usable
> by default, however. I would customize according our needs.
> 

twitter bootstrap is a nice toolkit. It's nice if we get a working
mobile interface on the side but our primary target is ordinary desktop.
I don't think people want to fill their quizzes with phones. Of course
we can do a poll as I am just using my unverified assumptions here.

>> The hobo plugin we used currently only has a stable release out for
>> rails 3.0. There does seem to be work going for 3.1 so we could target
>> that instead after checking the hobo timetable for getting 1.4 out
>> (which is needed for rails 3.1).
> --->
> 
> v3.0 vs v3.1 -- There are a few backwards-incompatible changes in
> Rails 3.1 which affect the future upgrade path if we choose to develop
> in 3.0 only. rincipal among these are a new convention for the
> placement of images, stylesheets, and JavaScript files—collectively
> known as assets—and a change in the default JavaScript library from
> Prototype to jQuery. Further, 3.1 has cool features like Asset
> pipeline,Reversible migrations which we would miss out we stick with
> 3.0.
> 

You can write reversible migrations with the current version already.
The new feature in rails 3.1 is that it can automatically deduce the
down migration from the up migration in most cases.

> However,
> With every new Rails release, there is a time delay while the rest of
> the ecosystem catches up. Now, hebo severely lagging behind. so I
> propose, we dump hobo & we writte the app as per the requirement while
> importing existing data on latest version of rails.
> 
> The reason I want to dump hobo is:
> 1) it is lagging behind in support for latest releases

The lag in getting new releases is certainly annoying.

> 2) It is not core rails.

Why is this a problem? Most rails projects end up using other gems than
just rails. Hobo of course is more invasive than than most plugins so
the learning curve must be weighed against potential benefits.

> 3) Hobo is good for protying but for apps that are required to go into
> production like recruiting app, traditional development model is
> preffered
> 

There are multiple hobo applications in production. I agree that Hobo is
not perfect. We can migrate away to plain rails but my hunch is that it
would take too much time for too little benefit.

> I hope this makes sense.
> 
> 
> 
> 
>> You should scope the draft proposal so that you yourself think there's
>> enough work to fill the whole GSoC for you. If think the items listed so
>> far are not enough for that feel free to ask for more ideas.
> -->
> 
> Sure, please let know what more than I can do
> 

Here's a couple things I can think of:
- integrate with Gentoo LDAP. I think there was a project last year that
was allowed to do that so we can probably too.
- machinery for comparing answers for copies
- meeting bot integration (similarly to the council web app from last year)

These are all of lesser priority than what we have in bugzilla and UX.

Regards,
Petteri



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Re: [gentoo-soc] Re: [GSOC 2012] Recruiting Webapp idea

[Gaurish Sharma]

>
> twitter bootstrap is a nice toolkit. It's nice if we get a working
> mobile interface on the side but our primary target is ordinary desktop.
> I don't think people want to fill their quizzes with phones. Of course
> we can do a poll as I am just using my unverified assumptions here.
-->
Alright, Then Desktop broswers only. And which ones?

1. Google Chrome
2. Firefox
3. Safari

any others?


> You can write reversible migrations with the current version already.
> The new feature in rails 3.1 is that it can automatically deduce the
> down migration from the up migration in most cases.
-->
yes, reversible migrations. they are pretty cool!

>> 2) It is not core rails.
>
> Why is this a problem? Most rails projects end up using other gems than
> just rails. Hobo of course is more invasive than than most plugins so
> the learning curve must be weighed against potential benefits.
-->
to it means,  we are not using rails. we are using hobo.  not that I
am saying that using hobo is wrong, its just that we get stuck on out
& getting latest updates specially security relates is a problem. Say
for example, a issue vulnerability similar to ActiveRecord's mass
assignment vulnerability & security patch is available. We won't be
able to upgrade without breaking the site.

>> 3) Hobo is good for protying but for apps that are required to go into
>> production like recruiting app, traditional development model is
>> preffered
>>
>
> There are multiple hobo applications in production. I agree that Hobo is
> not perfect. We can migrate away to plain rails but my hunch is that it
> would take too much time for too little benefit.
-->
In this case, your hunch is correct but in return we get access to
regular updates. so I think that's a huge benefit from security
standpoint.


>>
>> machinery for comparing answers for copies
-->

Comparing answers with each other? or search the internet for
duplicates aka copyscape?

> - meeting bot integration (similarly to the council web app from last year)
-->

I do not understand this. Can you please explain this in bit details

> These are all of lesser priority than what we have in bugzilla and UX.
-->
Makes sense



--Gaurish

Re: [gentoo-soc] Re: [GSOC 2012] Recruiting Webapp idea

[Gaurish Sharma]

[Update]
I have sent a rushed proposal. let me know, what you think


PS: There is lot of mistakes in it, I know and can correct those given
the access