Additional tasks

This page has curated tasks from previous events, but there are no maintainers for these projects at the event, and less care had been paid to making sure the development environment setup is easy and the tasks are verified.

If you're feeling brave, please do tackle these bugs. Remember:

• Mentors are here to help you, even if they're not experts on this particular project.
• Claim the task on the etherpad!
• Fill out bug reports/"workthrough" sheets for these issues, *especially* if you don't complete them! Or if you're feeling really lazy, you can skip the walkthrough sheets and leave your notes here in the wiki by adding to the bullet point for that task. The key is that you give us feedback on problems you're having with these, so we can fix them for the next person to try.

• Project: BioPython
  • Tasks:
    • Help convert single-letter protein alphabet to three-letter protein alphabet: There's no easy way to convert from the single letter protein alphabet to the three letter. Another poster suggests an already existing function but it will have to be adapted to fit multiple project-specific object types.
      • Attendee notes:
    • Verify that a documentation change has been made and, if not, change it.: A user suggested a chance to documentation one month ago. Check that change was made - if not, make change & submit patch. If it was, comment asking the issue to be closed.
      • Attendee notes:
    • Fix how code handles input error so it fails gracefully.: A certain type of invalid input currently causes the software to crash. Search for the problematic code, and fix it "fails gracefully" - that is, outputs an error message instead of crashing the software.
      • Attendee notes:

• Project: d3
  • Tasks:
    • Bug in the bar graph tutorial: Per the ticket, the tutorial is not entirely accurate with the current version of d3. Submit a Github pull request to fix the tutorial.
      • Attendee notes:
    • Unclear wording in bar graph tutorial: Per the ticket, there is a small bit of the tutorial that could be easier to read. Improve it in the way described.
      • Attendee notes:

• Project: ekiga
  • Tasks:
    • Find out if Ekiga still fails to compile with -DSEAL: If you like compiling software on Linux, you'll love this! If not, you will likely find it pretty uninteresting.
      • Attendee notes:

• Project: FreeNAS
  • Tasks:
    • The system seems to partially crash when you start the screensaver. Task: Start FreeNAS in a VM, and see if you can reproduce the problem.: FreeNAS is a program to turn a regular PC into a networked hard disk appliance, aka network attached storage device. In this task, you need to install FreeNAS by reading its documentation -- perhaps installing it in a virtual machine -- and see if the steps listed by the submitter of the bug also cause your FreeNAS install to require a reboot.
      • Attendee notes:
    • Start a FreeNAS virtual machine and try to use it, on Windows, with a screen reader. Then, if you can, fix the Python FreeNAS code so it works better for blind people: The ticket links to a discussion on the FreeNAS web forums. Read the conversation there, and install FreeNAS into a virtual machine or physical computer. Once you do that, install screen reading software to see how it treats the adm interface. See if you can reproduce the problematic behavior, which is that the screen reader doesn't read all of the menus
      • Attendee notes:

• Project: gimp-web
  • Tasks:
    • Verify that feeds continue to not work in Internet Explorer. If they still fail, then fix the problem.: This requires knowledge of feed formats, such as RSS and Atom, and a willingness to test in Windows. The file to change is in the gimp-web repository in git.gnome.org. The bug contains information on the probable fix, so you just need to write a patch.
      • Attendee notes:

• Project: MediaGoblin
  • Tasks:
    • Change an out of date URL in the documentation.
      • Attendee notes:
    • Add one line to bootstrap.sh script, for compatibility: Submit a patch adding the one line (per spaetz's final remark) required
      • Attendee notes:
    • Document the config options available in config_spec.ini: Since the code provides a sample configuration file, you can use a "symbolic link" to make that available within the docs/ directory, and then write a small bit of English text explaining that file.
      • Attendee notes:
    • CSS overflow fixes: Overflow not handled at pages like delete media ones: Take an existing patch and clean it up, so that it meets the requests of the project's main maintainer.
      • Attendee notes:
    • "New screenshots for the MediaGoblin site": Run the code on your computer, and take fresh screenshots that correspond to the same content as the screenshots on the current mediagoblin.org site. Share those screenshots by attaching them to the ticket, so that the maintainer of the project can update the website with those screenshots.
      • Attendee notes:
    • Write unit test for pagination (i.e. clicking 'next'): Right now, the MediaGoblin project lets you click 'next' and 'previous' to go between pages of media. The project wants the code that provides these prev/next links to be covered by automated tests.
      • Attendee notes:

• Project: Octave
  • Notes: Warning - setting up a development environment on Windows takes hours, so this is primarily recommended for GNU/Linux and Mac users.
  • Tasks:
    • Fix possible format string bug: A fan of octave automatically checked the source code for format string bugs related to the size of string buffers, and found a probable issue. You should investigate the issue and write on the issue a remark as to if you think the automatic check got it right. Preferably, also submit a patch.
      • Attendee notes:
    • bicubic needs documentation of "spline_alpha" argument: A previous patch changed some code, and was partially applied, but the documentation portion of that patch got dropped by accident. You should find that patch, make sure it still applies to the project, and then submit the part that needs to still be applied.
      • Attendee notes:
    • run('path/to/file') doesn't when ".m" is missing - test the fix: The submitted provided a patch. It is useful to the maintainer if other people indicate that the patch works for them.
      • Attendee notes:
    • convn(x,y,"valid") produces results that are different from Matlab: The submitted provided a patch. It is useful to the maintainer if other people indicate that the patch works for them. Additionally, the patch could use unit tests.
      • Attendee notes:

• Project: Pig
  • Tasks:
    • Add more automated tests: Add an automated test showing that when pig stores a DateTime object, the data is saved properly.
      • Attendee notes:
    • Document the BigInteger and BigDecimal data type: In the pig documentation, add documentation for two new data types. Look for existing data types documentation before getting started on this, to make sure you are in the right place to add the new documentation.
      • Attendee notes:
    • Add New Reserved Keywords To The Pig Docs: The pig documentation doesn't mention all the keywords of the language. You can improve it to do so.

• Project: svg-edit
  • Tasks:
    • Read this UI bug, and see if you can change the UI to match the suggestion. (Difficulty: high!):
      • Attendee notes:
    • Another contributor offered a patch for a bug two years ago but it was never acted upon. See if these bugs still exist, and see if this patch still fixes the issue.: You can use what you learned in the diffpatch OpenHatch training mission to apply the patch. Note that if the patch tool complains that the patch does not apply, even that is useful feedback. If you are interested in "forward-porting" the patch, which is to say, interested in taking the code submitted and adjusting it to work as a change against the current version of svg-edit, that would be even better.
      • Attendee notes:
    • See if you can reproduce this problem where svg-editor.html does not work properly, for version 2.5.1 when downloaded: All that is required here is to download version 2.5.1 of the svg-edit app and run it in your web browser. If you find it does not work properly in the way described, leave an update to say so on the bug report.
      • Attendee notes:
    • Display problem. Latest comment to issue claims bug is fixed in Firefox 21. Check and either confirm or deny. : All that is required is to try using Firefox 21 to test the app. If so, or if not, leave a comment on the bug to say as much.
      • Attendee notes:
    • Add a menu item to automatically download the SVG data:
      • Attendee notes:

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