A tip for Google Summer of Code applications

by Anuj Deshpande

Today the student applications opened up for Google Summer of Code 2019. I was talking to a student about the application process and thought it would be a good idea to share what I told him here as well.

I interned and mentored at Beagleboard.org in the past. And there we had a tiny task of cross compiling a simple application and sending a pull request to a particular repo. You had to post the link to the said PR in your

One of the things that you should do is do some small, meaningful contribution to the project. Documentation is an easy target.

  1. Try installing the software from source (not the prebuilt releases)
  2. Note down any issues that you face when doing this
  3. Send a merge request to the project
  4. If everything fails, run a spell check on the projects documentation source and send a fix for any mistakes.

Going through the documentation like this is a good way for you it get to know the project and its environment and the working style of everyone behind it (every org has its unique idiosyncrasies). This also helps you get noticed when the mentors are going through the selection process.