Re: [RFC][GSOC] Microproject Suggestion

[Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>]

Robear Selwans <rwagih.rw@gmail.com> writes:

> Hi, so it came to my attention that GSOC applicants will need to
> submit a microproject to be considered. I was thinking about ...
> So does that sound like a good idea?

Not really.

The purpose of a GSoC microproject is not about producing useful end
user product.  It is to learn the end-to-end flow, starting from the
initial submission, interacting with the reviewers to polish the
patch, to reach the final version.  For that purpose, we'd prefer a
bite-sized project (and that is why it is called "micro")---my
personal gut-feeling yardstick is that anything that takes more than
30 minutes to finish by an experienced Git developer to come up with
a perfect model answer is too big.

As a real patch for you to get your toes into Git development,
outside the scope of GSoC, I think it would be a good sized first
patch.  It is a bit too big for a microproject, and it is a bit too
small for a main GSoC project.

For the feature itself, I'd just do

    $ git reset --soft HEAD~$n ;# rewind
    $ git commit --amend

to open an editor, and then to the editor to edit the log message,
I'd tell it to insert "git log ..@{1}" to the edit buffer to help me
formulate the log message for the consolidated change, so I do not
personally see me using it, even if it were available.

Thanks.