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Jenkins accepted in Google Summer Of Code 2021!

Kara de la Marck
Kara de la Marck
March 17, 2021

Jenkins GSoC

On behalf of the Jenkins GSoC org team, I am happy to announce that this year, for the first time, the Jenkins projects will be participating in Google Summer of Code 2021 as part of the Continuous Delivery Foundation (CDF) GSoC organization.

We’re very excited to have the Jenkins project participate in GSoC as part the CDF mentoring organisation along with fellow CDF projects such as Ortelius, Screwdriver, Spinnaker, and Tekton. We believe that being part of the CDF GSoC org will create an environment for students with even more mentoring channels, potential cross-fertilization of ideas, and an even greater community of DevOps practitioners to join!

CDF GSoC

What’s next? GSoC is officially announced, and please expect more students to contact projects in our Gitter channels and mailing lists. Many communications will also happen in SIG and sub-project channels. Also, please join the gsoc channel on the CDF Slack. We will be working hard in order to help students to find interesting projects, to explore the area, and to prepare their project proposals before the deadline on April 13th. Then we will process the applications, select projects and assign mentor teams.

All information about the Jenkins GSoC is available on its sub-project page.

I am a student. How do I apply?

See the Information for students page for full application guidelines.

We encourage interested students to reach out to the Jenkins community early and to start exploring project ideas. All project ideas have chats and mailing lists referenced on their pages. We will be also organizing office hours for students, and you can use these meetings to meet org admins and mentors and to ask questions. Also, join our Gitter channel to receive information about such incoming events in the project.

The application period starts on March 29th, but you can prepare now! Use the time before the application period to discuss and improve your project proposals. We also recommend that you become familiar with Jenkins and start exploring your proposal areas. Project ideas include quick-start guidelines and reference newbie-friendly issues which may help with initial study. If you do not see anything interesting, you can propose your own project idea or check out ideas proposed by other CDF organizations participating in GSoC.

I want to be a mentor. Is it too late?

It’s not! We are looking for more project ideas and for Jenkins contributors/users who are passionate about Jenkins and want to mentor students. No hardcore experience required, mentors can study the project internals together with students and technical advisors. We are especially interested in ideas beyond the Java stack, and in ideas focusing new technologies and areas (e.g. Kubernetes, IoT, Python, Go, whatever).

You can either propose a new project idea or join an existing one. See the Call for Mentors post and Information for mentors for details. If you want to propose a new project, please do so as soon as possible so that students have time to explore them and to prepare their proposals.

This year mentorship does NOT require strong expertise in Jenkins development. The objective is to guide students and to get involved into the Jenkins community. GSoC org admins will help to find advisers if special expertise is required.

Testimonials from former Jenkins GSoC participants ❤️

"I participated in Google Summer of Code 2020 in cooperation with the Jenkins organization and I work on a project called Windows Service Wrapper, which allows running Jenkins as a service on a Windows machine. GSoC was the most wonderful and the most valuable experience I gained during my student life. The whole journey was full of experiences and Jenkins mentors always were there for us. I experienced a huge development of my skills while I was working on the project. I had many meetings, knowledge sharing sessions, and one pair-coding session with my mentors. One of the best things that I learned is the open-source community and open source mentality. It is not only about taking, but also about giving. Today I am maintaining an open-source project which is a simple programming language for kids which allows them to code in their native language, which will help to learn coding to students in rural areas of my country. Finally, Jenkins is a wonderful family and they always were there for us in all the ups and downs. I am proud to be a part of the Jenkins community."

  • Buddhika Chathuranga, GSoC 2020 student, Support for YAML Configuration in Windows Service Wrapper

"My GSoC journey in the Jenkins community starts by a draft proposal full of comments from mentors and ends by two plugins with hundreds of installations. Along with the daily coding review, the weekly meeting and the growth of the project, I increased my skills on programming and became a much more eligible engineer. What is more, the support from the whole Jenkins community leads me to a broader career path. I learned how to maintain a project, how to communicate with users and other developers on GitHub. Most importantly, the Jenkins community teaches me the principles of the open source world and welcomes me to the open source world with all their kind help."

  • Kezhi Xiong, GSoC 2020 students, GitHub Checks API project

"I worked as a Google Summer of Code student with the Jenkins project during the summer of 2019. The project provided me with an excellent opportunity to contribute to the world’s most popular automation server, learn about building performant and reliable applications, and interact with awesome people around the globe. Jenkins' ever helpful and extremely knowledgeable community made working on my project a real treat. I even got a chance to present my project at DevOps World in Lisbon! If you’re deciding which organization to work for this year, choose the Jenkins project — you can’t have a better GSoC experience than this!"

  • Abhyudaya Sharma, GSoC 2019 student, Role Strategy Performance Improvements

"I participated in Google Summer of Code 2018 with Jenkins as a student developer. Working for Jenkins in GSoC 2018 was one of the best experiences I have ever had. During 3 months of summer, I learned a lot of new things when working on the open-source project with Jenkins. Another best thing about Jenkins is the people, I received a lot of support from my mentors and other developers from the Jenkins community when working on my project. After GSoC, I also had a chance to go to the Jenkins World Conference in San Francisco to meet and connect with my mentors and other people in the Jenkins community. Overall, GSoC with Jenkins was a great experience and I highly recommend Jenkins as a great community to kickstart your open source journey."

  • Pham Vu Tuan, GSoC 2018 student, Remoting over Apache Kafka project

Important dates for GSoC 2021

  • Apr 13 - deadline for student applications

  • May 17 - accepted projects announced, teams start community bonding and coding

  • Aug 16 - coding period ends

  • Aug 31 - Results announced

See the GSoC Timeline for more info.

About the author

Kara de la Marck

Kara de la Marck

Ecosystem Advocate at the Continuous Delivery Foundation (CDF). Co-chair of the Continuous Delivery Foundation’s Interoperability SIG and a mentor and org admin for Outreachy and Google Summer of Code. Passionate about making technology accessible and building welcoming tech communities. Board director of codebar.io.