Python and the 2010 Google Summer of Code

I’ve been working on an article about the various Python projects that took part in the 2010 Google Summer of Code for over a month. There are a lot of projects and people to contact and I would say of the ones that I did contact, only 50-60% responded back. So I’m going to go with what I’ve got now and if you’d like to have me highlight your project too, then you can contact me and I’ll do so. It should be noted that a similar article will be posted on the Python Software Foundation blog as well, that I also wrote.

The Python Software Foundation supported many Google Summer of Code Projects this year by recruiting mentors and supporting projects from around the community. As the summer comes to a close, the PSF thought it would be a good idea to let you know how things turned out, so I contacted a few of the participants to ask them about their experience.

pip

Carl Meyer from the pip project told us that “the primary goals for the summer were setting up a continuous integration server for pip, speeding up the tests and making them runnable without network access, and porting pip to Python 3. The first and last got done fully, the middle one mostly done. And Hugo Lopes Tavares closed a number of miscellaneous tickets along the way as well.”

Carl also told us that he enjoyed being a mentor for the project. Hugo went on to join Globo.com when GSoC was over and thinks that his experience with GSoC helped him get hired.

rpy2

Laurent Gautier of the rpy2 project also enjoyed being a mentor. His project was to get rpy2 compatible with Python 3 on the C-level and to do some custom R graphical devices with rpy2. They were able to complete their project.

IPython

Fernando Perez was the mentor for the IPython work done by Omar Andrés Zapata Mesa and Gerardo Gutierrez. They worked on separate but related projects that dealt with a multi-process model of kernel hosting for IPython and some client software using the ZeroMQ messaging library.

You can check out the code at http://github.com/omazapa/ipython/ and http://github.com/muzgash/ipython/tree/ipythonqt-km

sympy

The folks at sympy went all out and posted all their GSoC information online. Their projects are well detailed, and they’re very technical. Be brave and read them anyway!

PyGame

Julian Habrock, the student for the PyGame project, posted his work as he did it on a blog. He worked on a new draw module for pygame and pygame2 with mentor, Marcus Von Appen. Julian thought the project was fun and he learned how to organize bigger projects and encourages other students who have the time and motivation to join GSoC next year.

Tell Us About Your Project

Let me know what your project did this summer! The Google Summer of Code website `lists many Python-related projects, but the level of detail online is inconsistent. If you would like to let me know what your project accomplished, please send an email to mike *at* pythonlibrary *dot* org.

Learn More

For more information, see the Python GSOC wiki page.