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docs: Update project ideas list for GSoC 2023.

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Co-authored-by: Tim Abbott <tabbott@zulip.com>
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@@ -10,27 +10,29 @@ how to apply](./apply.md)** to a Zulip outreach program. As noted in the guide:
> integration. That way, you'll have a much better idea of what you want to work
> on and how much you can accomplish.
## Project size and difficulty
## Project size
GSoC offers two project size options: 175 hours and 350 hours. We have
designed all our projects to have incremental milestones that can be
completed throughout the program. Consequently, all Zulip projects
described below are compatible with either project size. Of course,
the amount of progress you will be expected to make depends on whether
you are doing a 175-hour or 350-hour project.
completed throughout the program. Consequently, Zulip projects
described below are generally compatible with either project size. Of
course, the amount of progress you will be expected to make depends on
whether you are doing a 175-hour or 350-hour project.
We don't believe in labeling projects by difficulty, because the level of
difficulty is highly dependent on your particular skills. To help you find
a great project, we list the skills needed, and try to emphasize where strong
skills with particular tools are likely to be important for a given project.
It's also important to understand that how much progress one can
accomplish over the course of the summer is as much a function of the
project as of the contributor. Contributors who learn to consistently
package their work into [reviewable pull
requests](../contributing/reviewable-prs.md) tend to accomplish the
most during GSoC.
## Focus areas
For 2022, we are particularly interested in GSoC contributors who have
strong skills at visual design, HTML/CSS, mobile development, full
stack feature development, performance optimization, or Electron. So
if you're an applicant with those skills and are looking for an
organization to join, we'd love to talk to you!
For 2023, we are particularly interested in GSoC contributors who have
strong skills at full-stack feature development, Typescript, visual design,
HTML/CSS, or performance optimization. So if you're an applicant with
those skills and are looking for an organization to join, we'd love to
talk to you!
The Zulip project has a huge surface area, so even when we're focused
on something, a large amount of essential work goes into other parts of
@@ -41,21 +43,94 @@ the areas mentioned above are not your main strength.
## Project ideas by area
This section contains the seeds of project ideas; you will need to do research
on the Zulip codebase, read issues on GitHub, and talk with developers to put
together a complete project proposal. It's also fine to come up with your own
project ideas. As you'll see below, you can put together a great project around
one of the [area labels](https://github.com/zulip/zulip/labels) on GitHub; each
has a cluster of problems in one part of the Zulip project that we'd love to
improve.
**Note: The project ideas on this page are from summer 2022.** In the future, we
will update them with details for 2023. You can expect the updated list to look
similar to what you'll find below.
on the Zulip codebase, read issues on GitHub, read documentation, and talk with
developers to put together a complete project proposal. It's also fine to come
up with your own project ideas. As you'll see below, you can put together a
great project around one of the [area
labels](https://github.com/zulip/zulip/labels) on GitHub; each has a cluster of
problems in one part of the Zulip project that we'd love to improve.
### Full stack and web frontend focused projects
Code: [github.com/zulip/zulip -- Python, Django, JavaScript, and
CSS](https://github.com/zulip/zulip/).
Code: [github.com/zulip/zulip](https://github.com/zulip/zulip/) -- Python,
Django, JavaScript, and CSS.
- Contribute to Zulip's [**migration to user groups for
permissions**][user-group-permissions]. This migration is intended to replace
every setting in Zulip that currently allows organizations to assign
permissions based on role (admin, moderator, etc.) with a setting based on
arbitrary "user groups", making it much more customizable. This is very
important for large organizations using Zulip, including businesses and
open-source projects. Much of the basic design, API structure, and scaffolding
is complete, but there is a lot of work that remains to complete this vision.
The project can likely support a couple students; there is considerable work
to be done on the settings UI, both for user groups and for stream and
organization-level settings, dozens of existing settings to migrate, and [many
new settings][organization-settings-label] that users have long requested that
we've delayed adding in order to avoid having to migrate them. 175 or 350
hours; moderate difficulty. **Skills required**: Python, JavaScript, and CSS.
Attention to detail around code reuse/duplication, thoughtful testing, and
splitting large migrations into reviewable chunks.
Experts: Purushottam Tiwari, Sahil Batra
[user-group-permissions]: https://github.com/zulip/zulip/issues/19525
[organization-settings-label]: https://github.com/zulip/zulip/issues?q=is%3Aopen+is%3Aissue+label%3A%22area%3A+settings+%28admin%2Forg%29%22
- Help **migrate our JavaScript codebase to Typescript**. Zulip is in the process of
porting the main web app JavaScript codebase to TypeScript; at present we've
done much of the necessary tooling setup, and about 8% of lines have been
migrated (mostly in libraries used widely); the goal for this project will be
to get that to ~75%. [This topic in the Zulip development
community][typescript-migration] is a good place to coordinate work on this
project. Multiple students are possible; 175 or 350 hours; difficult.
**Skills required**: TypeScript and refactoring expertise; we're specifically
interested in students who are a type theory nerd and are invested in writing
types precisely and checking their work carefully.
Experts: Zixuan James Li, Priyank Patel, Anders Kaseorg
[typescript-migration]: https://chat.zulip.org/#narrow/stream/6-frontend/topic/typescript.20migration
- **Add an Inbox view** to the web app. We intend to add a new
home screen option for the Zulip web application that works like
the mobile app's home screen -- showing just topics containing
unread messages, in an organized fashion, in the web app's center
pane. Details are available in the
[issue](https://github.com/zulip/zulip/issues/22189) and a [draft pull
request](https://github.com/zulip/zulip/pull/22408) with prototyping
towards this was done in GSoC 2022. The goal for this project would be
to extract preparatory refactoring changes to make it nicely
parallel to the similar "Recent conversations" panel so that it can be
merged in a maintainable fashion, work with the community to
integrate those changes, complete the Inbox feature through being
merged, and then spend the remainder of the summer polishing it. 175
or 350 hours; moderate difficulty. **Skills required**: JavaScript,
CSS, and reading and understanding a complex code path.
Experts: Aman Agrawal, Shlok Patel
- **Extended notification settings**. Extend Zulip's powerful
notification settings model to support additional configuration
options. The top priorities in this area are [unmuting topics in
muted streams](https://github.com/zulip/zulip/issues/2517) and
[following a topic](https://github.com/zulip/zulip/issues/6027);
these are two of the 5 most requested features for the Zulip project
overall. For this project, one will likely want to start with some
simpler issues in the [notifications (messages)
area][notifications-messages] in order to get familiarity with the
code paths in question. There is enough to do in this project that
we could have two students working in this area. 175 or 350 hours;
moderate difficulty. **Skills required**: Python and JavaScript,
with a bit of CSS, database design, and other aspects of full-stack
feature development. Attention to detail, thinking through subtle
corner cases, designing good abstractions to help ensure
correctness, and writing tests to verify correct behavior in them
will be important for this work.
Experts: Abhijeet Bodas, Ryan Rehman
[notifications-messages]: https://github.com/zulip/zulip/labels/area%3A%20notifications%20%28messages%29
- **Cluster of priority features**. Implement a cluster of new full
stack features for Zulip. The [high priority
@@ -65,96 +140,100 @@ CSS](https://github.com/zulip/zulip/).
a theme (often, but not necessarily, an [area
label](https://github.com/zulip/zulip/labels); the goal will be to
implement and get fully merged a cluster of features with a
meaningful impact on the project. 175 or 350 hours; difficulty will
vary. Experts and skills depend on the features; Tim Abbott will
help you select an appropriate cluster once we've gotten to know you
and your strengths through getting involved in the project.
meaningful impact on the project. Zulip has a lot of half-finished
PRs, so some features might be completed by reading, understanding,
rebasing, and reviving an existing pull request. 175 or 350
hours; difficulty will vary. **Skills required**: Depends on the
features; Tim Abbott will help you select an appropriate cluster
once we've gotten to know you and your strengths through your getting
involved in the project.
- Zulip's [REST API documentation](https://zulip.com/api), which is an
important resource for any organization integrating with Zulip.
Zulip has a [nice framework](../documentation/api.md) for writing
API documentation built by past GSoC students based on the OpenAPI
standard with built-in automated tests of the data both the Python
and curl examples. However, the documentation isn't yet what we're
hoping for: there are a few dozen endpoints that are missing,
several of which are quite important, the visual design isn't
perfect (especially for e.g. `GET /events`), many template could be
deleted with a bit of framework effort, etc. See the [API docs area
label][api-docs-area] for many specific projects in the area. Our
goal for the summer is for 1-2 students to resolve all open issues
related to the REST API documentation. 175 or 350 hours; difficulty
easy or medium. **Skill required**: Python programming. Expertise
with reading documentation and English writing are valuable, and
product thinking about the experience of using third-party APIs is
very helpful. Expert: Lauryn Menard.
Experts: it depends
- Zulip's [**REST API documentation**](https://zulip.com/api), which is an
important resource for any organization integrating with Zulip, as
well as the developers of our API clients. Zulip has a [nice
framework](../documentation/api.md) for writing API documentation
built by past GSoC students based on the OpenAPI standard with
built-in automated tests of the data both the Python and curl
examples. However, the documentation isn't yet what we're hoping
for: there are a few dozen endpoints that are missing, several of
which are quite important, the visual design isn't perfect
(especially for, e.g., `GET /events`), many templates could be deleted
with a bit of framework effort, etc. See the [API docs area
label][api-docs-area] for some specific projects in the area; and
`git grep pending_endpoints` to find the list of endpoints that need
documentation and their priorities. Our goal for the summer is for
1-2 students to resolve all open issues related to the REST API
documentation. 175 or 350 hours; difficulty easy or medium. **Skills
required**: Python programming. Expertise with reading documentation
and English writing are valuable, and product thinking about the
experience of using third-party APIs is very helpful.
Expert: Lauryn Menard
[api-docs-area]: https://github.com/zulip/zulip/issues?q=is%3Aopen+is%3Aissue+label%3A%22area%3A+documentation+%28api+and+integrations%29%22
- Implement important full-stack features for open source projects
using Zulip, including [default stream
groups](https://github.com/zulip/zulip/issues/13670) and
improvements to the upcoming [public
access](https://github.com/zulip/zulip/issues/13172)
feature. Experts: Tim Abbott, Aman Agrawal. Many of these issues
have open PRs with substantial work towards the goal, but each of
them is likely to have dozens of adjacent or follow-up tasks. 175 or
350 hours; easy or medium. The most important skill for this work is
carefully thinking through and verifying changes that affect
multiple configurations.
- **Improve the UI and visual design** of the Zulip web app. We are working on a
major redesign for the core surfaces of the Zulip web app -- see the [redesign
label][redesign-label] for specced out work, with more to come. We're
particularly excited about students who are interested in making our CSS clean
and readable as part of working on the UI. 175 or 350 hours; medium to
difficult. **Skills required**: Design, HTML and CSS skills; most important is
the ability to carefully verify that one's changes are correct and will not
break other parts of the app; design changes are very rewarding since they are
highly user-facing, but that also means there is a higher bar for correctness
and reviewability for one's work. A great application would include PRs making
small, clean improvements to the Zulip UI (whether logged-in or logged-out
pages).
- Fill in gaps, fix bugs, and improve the framework for Zulip's
library of native integrations. We have about 120 native
integrations, but there's more that would be valuable to add, and
several extensions to the framework that would dramatically improve
the user experience of using these, such as being able to do
callbacks to third-party services like Stripe to display more
user-friendly notifications. The [the integrations label on
GitHub](https://github.com/zulip/zulip/labels/area%3A%20integrations)
lists some of the priorities here (many of which are great
preparatory projects). 175 or 350 hours; medium difficulty with
various possible difficult extensions. **Skills required**: Strong
Python experience, will to install and do careful manual testing of
third-party products. Fluent English, usability sense and/or
technical writing skills are all pluses. Expert: Zixuan Li.
Experts: Aman Agrawal, Alya Abbott
- Optimize performance and scalability, either for the web frontend or
[redesign-label]: https://github.com/zulip/zulip/issues?q=is%3Aopen+is%3Aissue+label%3Aredesign
- **Optimize performance and scalability**, either for the web frontend or
the server. Zulip is already one of the faster web apps out there,
but there are a bunch of ideas for how to make it substantially
faster. This is likely a particularly challenging project to do
but we have a number of ideas for how to make it substantially
faster yet. This is likely a particularly challenging project to do
well, since there are a lot of subtle interactions to
understand. 175 or 350 hours; difficult. **Skill recommended**:
Strong debugging, communication, and code reading skills are most
important here. JavaScript experience; some Python/Django
experience, some skill with CSS, ideally experience using the Chrome
Timeline profiling tools (but you can pick this up as you go) can be
useful depending on what profiling shows. Our [backend scalability
design doc](../subsystems/performance.md) and the [production issue
label][prod-label] (where performance/scalability issues tend to be
filed) may be helpful reading for the backend part of this. Experts:
Steve Howell, Tim Abbott, Yash RE.
Performance profiling tools (but you can pick this up as you go) can
be useful depending on what profiling shows. Our [backend
scalability design doc](../subsystems/performance.md) and the
[performance label][perf-label] may be helpful reading for the
backend part of this.
[prod-label]: https://github.com/zulip/zulip/issues?q=is%3Aopen+is%3Aissue+label%3A%22area%3A+production%22
Experts: Tim Abbott, Yash RE
- Extract JavaScript logic modules from the Zulip web app that we'd
like to be able to share with the Zulip mobile app. This work can have
big benefits it terms of avoiding code duplication for complex
logic. We have prototyped for a few modules by migrating them to
`static/shared/`; this project will involve closely collaborating
with the mobile team to prioritize the modules to migrate. 175 or
350 hours; difficult. **Skills recommended**: JavaScript experience,
careful refactoring, API design, React.
[perf-label]: https://github.com/zulip/zulip/labels/area%3A%20performance
Experts: Greg Price, Austin Riba, Steve Howell.
- Fill in gaps, fix bugs, and improve the framework for Zulip's **library of
native integrations**. We have about 120 native integrations, but there are a
number of others we would like to add. Also, several extensions to the
framework that would dramatically improve the user experience of using
integrations, e.g., being able to do callbacks to third-party services
like Stripe to display more user-friendly notifications. The [the integrations
label on GitHub](https://github.com/zulip/zulip/labels/area%3A%20integrations)
lists some of the priorities here (many of which are great preparatory
projects). 175 or 350 hours; medium difficulty with various possible difficult
extensions. **Skills required**: Strong Python experience, will to install and
do careful manual testing of third-party products. Fluent English, usability
sense and/or technical writing skills are all pluses.
- Make Zulip integrations easier for nontechnical users to set up.
Expert: Zixuan Li
- **Make Zulip integrations easier for nontechnical users to set up**.
This includes adding a backend permissions system for managing bot
permissions (and implementing the enforcement logic), adding an
OAuth system for presenting those controls to users, as well as
making the /integrations page UI have buttons to create a bot,
making the `/integrations` page UI have buttons to create a bot,
rather than sending users to the administration page. 175 or 350
hours; easy to difficult depending on scope. **Skills recommended**:
Strong Python/Django; JavaScript, CSS, and design sense
helpful. Understanding of implementing OAuth providers, e.g. having
helpful. Understanding of implementing OAuth providers, e.g., having
built a prototype with [the Django OAuth
toolkit](https://django-oauth-toolkit.readthedocs.io/en/latest/)
would be great to demonstrate as part of an application. The [Zulip
@@ -164,101 +243,13 @@ CSS](https://github.com/zulip/zulip/).
[the integrations label on
GitHub](https://github.com/zulip/zulip/labels/area%3A%20integrations)
has a bunch of good starter issues to demonstrate your skills if
you're interested in this area. Expert: Eeshan Garg.
you're interested in this area.
- Extend Zulip's meta-integration that converts the Slack incoming
webhook API to post messages into Zulip. Zulip has several dozen
native integrations (https://zulip.com/integrations/), but Slack has
a ton more. We should build an interface to make all of Slack’s
numerous third-party integrations work with Zulip as well, by
basically building a Zulip incoming webhook interface that accepts
the Slack API (if you just put in a Zulip server URL as your "Slack
server"). **Skills required**: Strong Python experience; experience
with the Slack API a plus. Work should include documenting the
system and advertising it. 175 or 350 hours; medium to
difficult. Expert: Tim Abbott.
- Visual and user experience design work on the core Zulip web UI.
We're particularly excited about students who are interested in
making our CSS clean and readable as part of working on the UI; we
are working on a major redesign and have a lot of plans that we
believe will substantially improve the application but require care
and determination to implement and integrate. 175 or 350 hours;
medium to difficult. **Skills required**: Design, HTML and CSS
skills; most important is the ability to carefully verify that one's
changes are correct and will not break other parts of the app;
design changes are very rewarding since they are highly user-facing,
but that also means there is a higher bar for correctness and
reviewability for one's work. A great application would include PRs
making small, clean improvements to the Zulip UI (whether logged-in
or logged-out pages). Experts: Aman Agrawal, Alya Abbott.
- Build support for outgoing webhooks and slash commands into Zulip to
improve its chat-ops capabilities. There's an [old pull
request](https://github.com/zulip/zulip/pull/1393) with a lot of
work on the outgoing webhooks piece of this feature that would need
to be cleaned up and finished, and then we need to build support for
slash commands, some example integrations, and a full set of
documentation and tests. Recommended reading includes Slack's
documentation for these features, the Zulip message sending code
path, and the linked pull request. 175 or 350 hours; easy to
medium. **Skills required**: Strong Python/Django skills. Expert:
Steve Howell.
- Build a system for managing Zulip bots entirely on the web.
Right now, there's a somewhat cumbersome process where you download
the API bindings, create a bot with an API key, put it in
configuration files, etc. We'd like to move to a model where a bot
could easily progress from being a quick prototype to being a third-party extension to
being built into Zulip. And then for built-in bots, one should be able to click a few
buttons of configuration on the web to set them up and include them in
your organization. We've developed a number of example bots
in the [`zulip_bots`](https://github.com/zulip/python-zulip-api/tree/main/zulip_bots)
PyPI package. 175 or 350 hours; medium difficulty.
**Skills recommended**: Python and JavaScript/CSS, plus devops
skills (Linux deployment, Docker, Puppet etc.) are all useful here.
Experience writing tools using various popular APIs is helpful for
being able to make good choices. Expert: Steve Howell.
- Improve the UI and visual design of the existing Zulip settings and
administration pages while fixing bugs and adding new settings. The
pages have improved a great deal during recent GSoCs, but because
they have a ton of surface area, there's a lot to do. You can get a
great sense of what needs to be done by playing with the
settings/administration/streams overlays in a development
environment. You can get experience working on the subsystem by
working on some of [our open settings/admin
issues][all-settings-issues]. 175
to 350 hours; easy to medium. **Skills recommended**: JavaScript,
HTML, CSS, and an eye for visual design. Expert: Sahil Batra.
Expert: Zixuan James Li
[all-settings-issues]: https://github.com/zulip/zulip/issues?q=is%3Aopen+is%3Aissue+label%3A%22area%3A+settings+%28admin%2Forg%29%22%2C%22area%3A+settings+%28user%29%22%2C%22area%3A+stream+settings%22%2C%22area%3A+settings+UI%22
- Build out the administration pages for Zulip to add new permissions
and other settings more features that will make Zulip better for
larger organizations. We get constant requests for these kinds of
features from Zulip users. The Zulip bug tracker has plentiful open
issues( [settings
(admin/org)](https://github.com/zulip/zulip/labels/area%3A%20settings%20%28admin%2Forg%29),
[settings
UI](https://github.com/zulip/zulip/labels/area%3A%20settings%20UI),
[settings
(user)](https://github.com/zulip/zulip/labels/area%3A%20settings%20%28user%29),
[stream
settings](https://github.com/zulip/zulip/labels/area%3A%20stream%20settings)
) in the space of improving the Zulip administrative UI. Many are
little bite-size fixes in those pages, which are great for getting a
feel for things, but a solid project here would be implementing
several of the major missing features as full-stack development
projects. A particular focus this summer will be extending most
permissions settings to use a new groups-based model. 350 or 175
hours; medium difficulty. **Skills recommended**: A good mix of
Python/Django and HTML/CSS/JavaScript skill is ideal. The system for
adding new features is [well
documented](../tutorials/new-feature-tutorial.md). Expert: Sahil
Batra.
- Work on Zulip's development and testing infrastructure. Zulip is a
- Work on Zulip's **development and testing infrastructure**. Zulip is a
project that takes great pride in building great tools for
development, but there's always more to do to make the experience
delightful. Significantly, about 10% of Zulip's open issues are
@@ -269,142 +260,77 @@ CSS](https://github.com/zulip/zulip/).
[labels](https://github.com/zulip/zulip/labels/area%3A%20provision)
for tooling improvements.
This is a somewhat unusual project, in that it would likely consist
of dozens of small improvements to the overall codebase, but this
sort of work has a huge impact on the experience of other Zulip
developers and thus the community as a whole (project leader Tim
Abbott spends more time on the development experience than any other
single area).
This is a somewhat unusual project, in that it would likely consist of dozens
of small improvements to the overall codebase, but this sort of work has a
huge impact on the experience of other Zulip developers and thus the community
as a whole (project leader Tim Abbott spends more time on the development
experience than any other single area). 175 or 350 hours; difficult. **Skills
required**: Python, some DevOps, and a passion for checking your work
carefully. A strong applicant for this will have completed several projects in
these areas.
A possible specific larger project in this space is working on
adding [mypy](../testing/mypy.md) stubs
for Django in mypy to make our type checking more powerful. Read
[our mypy blog post](https://blog.zulip.org/2016/10/13/static-types-in-python-oh-mypy/)
for details on how mypy works and is integrated into Zulip. This
specific project is ideal for a strong contributor interested in
type systems. See [this
issue](https://github.com/zulip/zulip/pull/18777) for details on the
current state of this work. 175 or 350 hours; difficult.
**Skills required**: Python, some DevOps, and a passion for checking
your work carefully. A strong applicant for this will have
completed several projects in these areas.
Experts: Anders Kaseorg (provision, testing), Steve Howell (tooling, testing).
- Port our JavaScript codebase to Typescript. Zulip is in the process
of porting the main web app JavaScript codebase to TypeScript; at
present we've done much of the necessary tooling setup, and about 5%
of lines have been migrated (mostly in libraries used widely); the
goal for this project will be to get that to more like 75%. Multiple
students are possible; 175 and 350 hours; difficult. **Skills
required**: TypeScript and refactoring expertise; we're specifically
interested in students who are a type theory nerd and are invested
in writing types precisely and checking their work
carefully. Experts: Priyank Patel, Anders Kaseorg.
- Write more API client libraries in more languages, or improve the
ones that already exist (in
[python](https://github.com/zulip/python-zulip-api),
[JavaScript](https://github.com/zulip/zulip-js),
[PHP](https://packagist.org/packages/mrferos/zulip-php), and
[Haskell](https://hackage.haskell.org/package/hzulip)). The
JavaScript bindings are a particularly high priority, since they are
a project that hasn't gotten a lot of attention since being adopted
from its original author, and we'd like to convert them to
Typescript. 175 or 350 hours; medium difficulty. **Skills
required**: Experience with the target language and API
design. Expert: Depends on language.
### React Native mobile app
Code:
[React Native mobile app](https://github.com/zulip/zulip-mobile).
Experts: Greg Price, Chris Bobbe.
The highest priority for the Zulip project overall is improving the
Zulip React Native mobile app.
- Work on issues and polish for the app. You can see the open issues
[here](https://github.com/zulip/zulip-mobile/issues). There are a
few hundred open issues across the project, and likely many more
problems that nobody has found yet; in the short term, it needs
polish, bug finding/squashing, and debugging. So browse the open
issues, play with the app, and get involved! Goals include parity
with the web app (in terms of what you can do), parity with Slack (in
terms of the visuals), world-class scrolling and narrowing
performance, and a great codebase.
A good project proposal here will bundle together a few focus areas
that you want to make really great (e.g. the message composing,
editing, and reacting experience), that you can work on over the
summer. We'd love to have multiple students working on this area if we
have enough strong applicants. 175 or 350 hours; medium to difficult.
**Skills required**: Strong programming experience, especially in
reading the documentation of unfamiliar projects and communicating
what you learned. JavaScript and React experience are great pluses,
as are iOS or Android development/design experience is useful as
well. You'll need to learn React Native as part of getting
involved. There's tons of good online tutorials, courses, etc.
### Electron desktop app
Code:
[Our cross-platform desktop app written in JavaScript on Electron](https://github.com/zulip/zulip-desktop).
Experts: Anders Kaseorg, Akash Nimare, Abhighyan Khaund.
- Contribute to our [Electron-based desktop client
application](https://github.com/zulip/zulip-desktop). There's
plenty of feature/UI work to do, but focus areas for us include
things to (1) improve the release process for the app, using
automated testing, TypeScript, etc. and (2) polish the UI. Browse
the open issues and get involved! 175 or 350 hours. This is a
difficult project because it is important user-facing code with good
automated testing, so the bar for convincing others your work is
correct is high.
**Skills required**: JavaScript experience, Electron experience. You
can learn electron as part of your application!
Good preparation for desktop app projects is to (1) try out the app
and see if you can find bugs or polish problems lacking open issues
and report them and (2) fix some polish issues in either the Electron
app or the Zulip web frontend (which is used by the electron app).
- Prototype a next generation Zulip desktop app implemented using the
Tauri Rust-based framework. Tauri is a promising new project that we
believe is likely a better technical direction for client
applications than Electron for desktop apps for security and
resource consumption reasons. The goal of this project would be to
build a working prototype to evaluate to what extent Tauri is a
viable platform for us to migrate the Zulip desktop app to. 350
hours only; difficult. **Skill required**: Ability to learn quickly.
Expert: Tim Abbott
### Terminal app
Code: [Zulip Terminal](https://github.com/zulip/zulip-terminal)
Experts: Aman Agrawal, Neil Pilgrim.
- Work on Zulip Terminal, the official terminal client for Zulip.
zulip-terminal is already a basic usable client, but it needs a lot
of work to approach the web app's quality level. We would be happy
to accept multiple strong students to work on this project. Our goal
for this summer is to improve its quality enough that we can upgrade
it from an alpha to an advertised feature. 175 or 350 hours; medium
difficulty. **Skills required**: Python 3 development skills, good
communication and project management skills, good at reading code
and testing.
Experts: Neil Pilgrim, Aman Agrawal
### Archive tool
- Work on Zulip Terminal, the official terminal client for Zulip. zulip-terminal
is out in beta, but there's still a lot to do for it to approach parity with
the web app. We would be happy to accept multiple strong students to work on
this project. 175 or 350 hours; medium difficulty. **Skills required**: Python
3 development skills, good communication and project management skills, good
at reading code and testing.
Code: [zulip-archive](https://github.com/zulip/zulip-archive)
Experts: Rein Zustand, Steve Howell
### Desktop app
- Work on zulip-archive, which provides a Google-indexable read-only
archive of Zulip conversations. The issue tracker for the project
has a great set of introductory/small projects; the overall goal is
to make the project super convenient to use for our OSS
communities. 175 or 350 hours; medium difficulty.
**Skills useful**: Python 3, reading feedback from users, CSS,
GitHub Actions.
Code:
[Our cross-platform desktop app written in JavaScript on
Electron](https://github.com/zulip/zulip-desktop).
Expert: Anders Kaseorg
- **Contribute to our [Electron-based desktop client
application](https://github.com/zulip/zulip-desktop)**. There's plenty of
feature/UI work to do, but focus areas for us include things to (1) improve
the release process for the app, using automated testing, TypeScript, etc.,
and (2) polishing the UI. Browse the open issues and get involved! 175 or 350
hours. This is a difficult project because it is important user-facing code
without good automated testing, so the bar for writing high quality,
reviewable PRs that convince others your work is correct is high. **Skills
required**: JavaScript, Electron; you can learn Electron as part of your
application.
- **Prototype a next generation Zulip desktop app implemented using
the Tauri Rust-based framework**. Tauri is a promising new project
that we believe is likely a better technical direction for client
applications than Electron for desktop apps, for security and
resource consumption reasons. The goal of this project would be to
build a working prototype to evaluate to what extent Tauri is a
viable platform for us to migrate the Zulip desktop app to. 350
hours only; difficult. **Skills required**: Ability to learn
quickly. Experience with Rust and secure software design may be
helpful.
### Mobile apps
Code:
[React Native mobile app](https://github.com/zulip/zulip-mobile); [Flutter
prototype app](https://github.com/zulip/zulip-flutter)
Experts: Greg Price, Chris Bobbe
We're exploring rewriting Zulip's mobile apps, which are currently implemented
using React Native, using Flutter. See [this development community
thread][flutter-thread] for details.
If you are a Flutter expert and excited about getting involved, feel free to
introduce yourself in the [#mobile stream][mobile-stream] in the development
community. However because the project and the development process around it are
not yet established, **we expect not to accept any GSoC contributors for the Zulip
mobile apps** for GSoC 2023.
[flutter-thread]: https://chat.zulip.org/#narrow/stream/2-general/topic/Flutter
[mobile-stream]: https://chat.zulip.org/#narrow/stream/48-mobile