Participate to GSoC

[Warren Dumortier]

Hello everybody!

First i'll present myself.
So my name's Warren Dumortier and i live in Belgium, i've been using
Wine for 4 years and i've always been interrested on how it works
Also i'm quite active on AppDB for submitting apps. I actively program
in C on Linux since 3 years as Gfire (our program) developer.

As i actively program in C and would like to develop for WINE, i had a
look at the GSoC wiki page.
This year i could finally participate as i'm legally allowed now.

Are there any specific things to know in order to be accepted as a
GSoC student for WINE?
These are the two ideas i'd like to implement:

Theming - Implement Wine GTK/QT theming support
Vista Game Explorer API - Implement the core functionality of this dll

I don't know which one i would choose yet, but how are ideas assigned
to students, are there requirements needed for each idea?
Then i could for example get familiar with the idea before the GSoC starts...
When can i ask to be GSoC student?

Thanks in advance, kind regards.

[Reece Dunn]

On 7 February 2010 10:35, Warren Dumortier  wrote:
> Hello everybody!

Hello, and welcome to the Wine project.
> First i'll present myself.
> So my name's Warren Dumortier and i live in Belgium, i've been using
> Wine for 4 years and i've always been interrested on how it works
> Also i'm quite active on AppDB for submitting apps. I actively program
> in C on Linux since 3 years as Gfire (our program) developer.
>
> As i actively program in C and would like to develop for WINE, i had a
> look at the GSoC wiki page.
> This year i could finally participate as i'm legally allowed now.
>
> Are there any specific things to know in order to be accepted as a
> GSoC student for WINE?

The requirements for participation are listed on the Wine wiki page
(http://wiki.winehq.org/SummerOfCode).
> These are the two ideas i'd like to implement:
>
> Theming - Implement Wine GTK/QT theming support

http://wiki.winehq.org/XPThemes is a good starting point (I am
updating this to link to the ColorSchemes page (which I am updating),
and the other page about theme integration).
> Vista Game Explorer API - Implement the core functionality of this dll

That is covered in http://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=21261, as
noted on the wiki page.
> I don't know which one i would choose yet, but how are ideas assigned
> to students, are there requirements needed for each idea?

Students send emails like you have done saying what they are
interested in. Also, participate in the #winehackers IRC channel --
that is where a lot of discussion about Wine development takes place.

As for requirements for each idea, it depends on the idea. It would
also help to have experience in the different areas.

For the theming work, it would help to have an understanding of GDI
programming, the uxtheme (XP theming support) API and writing custom
controls on the Wine/Windows API side for any improvement work to the
theming logic. The main part here though, is how GTK (and Qt) theming
works and how that can be captured to create an XP theme from it.

It might be easier to start with the colour scheme
(http://wiki.winehq.org/ColorScheme) integration, picking that up from
the GTK/Qt theme (probably limiting to GTK initially, as this is a C
API and limits what you need to understand) first and use that as your
goal for the GSoC project, as doing a full-blown XP-based theme is a
lot of work, and you end up hitting a lot of Wine bugs in that area.

Once you have this in place, you can then consider extending it to Qt,
or building it up to be an XP theme (tackling it a control at a time,
with the first control adding the necessary infrastructure on top of
the colour scheme work, will be best I think, although I am not sure
how the theming logic responds to a partial theme -- that is, a theme
that just specifies how buttons look).

NOTE: I am
> Then i could for example get familiar with the idea before the GSoC starts...
> When can i ask to be GSoC student?

According to the top of the Wine wiki page, you need to apply at
http://code.google.com/soc/.
> Thanks in advance, kind regards.

- Reece