[Teammetrics-discuss] [GSOC-2012] Interested in improving Debian Team Activity Metrics

[Vipin Nair]

Hi,

I am Vipin and i am interested in this project as GSOC work this summer. I
have been a Debian user since quiet some time and i see this as an
opportunity to contribute back to Debian :) I am excited to work on this
project because i have seen the the output of the team metrics project
here: http://blends.debian.net/liststats/ and it definitely gives a
valuable insight into the working of the Debian community and i think it
needs a broader audience which the web interface will be able to provide.

I have relevant experience in web development and API design but mostly in
PHP. I am new to django/pylons but i have built a web application[1] and
the application API over webapp framework, that runs over the Google App
Engine and i believe i can learn the suggested frameworks quickly and I am
comfortable with git as well[2]. I have gone through some basic pylons and
do feel comfortable with it.

I know the organization list was out some time back but we had exams at
university which just got over, hence the delay but I have gone through the
discussion on the mailing list and these is what i understand of the
project, do correct me if i am wrong or if i have missed something.

1) Data for the metrics is available on a PostgreSQL database which needs
to be presented on the web interface.
2) An API needs to be designed for data access.
3) Add additional metrics/improve code/ verify if the data is correct.
4) Django/Pylons framework is preferred and ORM will be an overkill for the
relatively simple database structure.
5) Avoid javascript wherever possible to keep the design simple.
6) Data is updated in the database every month using a cron job.

I have cloned the repo and put the udd dump for download. I'll create a
local development environment and start hacking :) I have some doubts
regarding the implementation though,

1) The repo has code that generates plots for different stats and i have
read some one suggesting using matplotlib to generate graphs. Are these
plots rendered on the server side and are we expected to use these when
designing the web interface?

2) Why avoid javascript since there are many good (cross-browser
compatible) libraries for rendering graphs in the browser? We can consume
our own API (say it provides JSON data) and render the graphs in the
browser instead of generating graphs at the server side.

Looking forward to reply from mentors.


References:
[1] https://github.com/swvist/tuxofwar
[2] Github Profile: https://github.com/swvist


Thank you very much,

Regards,
Vipin
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