Recently, Google announced the list of students who have been selected to work with different organisations in its Summer of Code 2022 program. I applied and sent my proposal to work with Chromium over the summer and I'm very happy to inform you all that I was selected and will be working with Chromium this summer!
However, What is Google Summer of Code? 🤔
Google Summer of Code (GSoC) is a global, online program that brings new contributors into open-source software organizations. The program began in 2005 and until 2021 was focused on bringing university students into open source. Starting in 2022, the program has been extended to welcome all new contributors to open source who are 18 years and older to apply to the program as GSoC Contributors. These GSoC Contributors will write code and become part of these open source communities while making some money along the way. The organizations provide mentors who act as guides through the entire process, from learning about the community to helping GSoC Contributors become familiar with the code base and testing practices, to finally releasing their code for the world to use! The ultimate goal is that these GSoC Contributors will become excited about the communities they are involved with during the program and will continue to actively contribute to the communities long after their GSoC program ends - or maybe start their own open-source project!
What is Chromium?
We all know about Chrome, the most popular browser in the world. However, did you know there would be no Chrome without Chromium! Chromium is an open-source and free web browser project which is principally developed and maintained by Google. The existing codebase for Chromium provides the vast majority of code for the Google Chrome browser which is a kind of proprietary software and obviously has some additional features. The Chromium codebase is widely used by Microsoft Edge, Samsung Internet, Opera and many other browsers that are running Chromium under the hood.
Understood, but what will you be working on?
I will be working on automating Drag-and-Drop Tests for Blink (the rendering engine for Chromium) which has multiple drag-and-drop API tests that currently rely upon a Chromium-specific automation library, also the web-platform-tests (WPTs) project has a lot of drag-and-drop tests that can be automated but are not as of now. Within the last few years, work has been done to add cross-browser automation API to the WPTs project and it is now possible to automate some of the drag-and-drop tests. Our project aims to convert as many of the Blink-specific tests as possible into WPTS. WPTs are used by almost all popular browsers including Chrome, Opera, Edge, Safari, Chromium, Firefox, etc. This means that WPTs alone ensure the proper functioning of web browsers used by millions of people! Pretty cool stuff if you ask me!
Why GSoC and Why Chromium?
To be honest, I was not interested in GSoC for the stipend or just because it is backed by Google, it was something I have always wanted to do ever since I got into web development and programming in general (it was one of my long term goals to be very honest and I never expected to get selected for the prestigious program in my First Year itself). I have also always been intrigued by open-source which in turn sparked my interest in learning about Web3. So when I got the notification that Google Summer of Code organizations have been announced, I immediately started looking for organizations where I could utilize my Javascript and Web Development knowledge to make some of my first contributions to open-source!
The reason behind me choosing Chromium is very simple, Chromium comes under Google and I have always heard about how interesting the work culture is at Google and have always wanted to experience it at least once! Plus the Starter Bugs/ Ideas List under Chromium was very well maintained and also extremely well explained with thorough details about each and every idea in the list. Both my mentors, Andrew and Mike were very helpful throughout the entire contributor period and helped me navigate the starter bugs.
Honestly, I did not want to do GSoC for the stipend or just because it is backed by Google. I wanted to do it because I wanted to learn under the mentorship of people working actively in an Open Source organization and further develop my skills. I had decided to utilize my summer for something useful. I was also looking for a chance to apply everything that I had learned until now to something meaningful. I was scrolling through organizations on the GSoC website and came across Chromium and thought no way I will ever get into an organization of such a large scale! After getting my hands dirty with the starter bug and keeping in touch with my mentors throughout the contributor period, I sent my proposal on the last day with my fingers crossed. Finally on May 20, around 11:40 PM after refreshing the website for around 10 minutes I saw that my proposal had been accepted!!
My main goal for these 3.5/4 months is to come out with a positive experience about Open Source (while making some meaningful CLs xD) and also make sure it was worth the time invested for my mentors as well.