My GSoC’20 Journey with INCF org from Start to End

Hi 👋 This blog is about my GSoC’20 journey with *INCF Org*. Let’s follow along with me and may be you will find out something useful in it. So, Let’s get started !!!

A little about myself 😎

Currently, I have finished my third year of B.Tech computer science from SMVDU, Jammu, India. When I got into the college, I literally didn’t have any knowledge about programming. But all the time, I was so curious about learning about the technology. So, I started with C language as the indian curriculum. 😅 And then got into the field deeper with the time and started learning web developement and so on and moving along the way journey of open souce started.🏄🏻

How I get started with GSOC 📚

I heard a very popular term in my college GSoC. So, after some research and from my seniors I got to know about this and then I decided to give it a try too without thinking much about the end results. I applied in my second year for the first time in GSoC but unfortunately didn’t get in.

Then after a year with lot of improvements in myself I started looking out for organisations in January which has projects in my field of interest. Then I searched a lot and found out the Project idea in INCF organisation which seemed exactly of my field of interest and yeah from that point 🤓 Awesome journey started with INCF organisation. I understood the project idea and discussed it with my mentor Lia Domide and submitted my proposal only in the INCF organisation.

The first step is always the hardest and I should say my mentor Lia helped me a lot to cross that step. She always told the improvements which i should do and showed me the right path and the time went on. I didn’t know anything about my result but I knew that this time I have given my best and tried to complete all the aspects which I should.

The result day came and at 06:00 PM UTC results were announced by Google. I haven’t done the courage to open the dashboard 🙃 and then I got the mail notification. xD

Woohoo I got into Google summer of Code 2020🥳🥳

About Project 📖

My project idea is to make a web GUI for the TVB reconstruction pipeline and integrate it with pegasus WMS. The reconstruction pipeline takes RMN images as input and processes them, then produces files that are compatible with TVB. Pegasus WMS provides the job status and job execution statistics.

About My Work 👨‍💻

Community Bonding Period

I got to interact with my mentors and we discussed the workflow of the project and divided the work between three phases. We discussed all the aspects which we will be going to use in near future.

I started the coding in this period with the initial setup of my project as it’s from scratch.

First Work Period

• Completed the initial setup of the project.
• Implemented the Landing page, Input page and Configuration Page.
• Connected all these components and refactored some part of the code.

Blockers 🙆🏻‍♂️

As, it’s obvious to get blockers when you implement the good things. So, I also humanly got the blockers.

I got stuck in saving the configuration data in .properties file and when the user edits and update the data everytime then it should overwrite dynamically in the file.

So, after all I have solved all the issues by discussing with my mentor Paula. She always helped me in finding the detailed approach to solve the error. We covered all the milestones as discussed in this phase.

Second Work Period

• Done the changes in run_sequentially file accordingly.
• Worked with Docker image of Tvb-recon and Tvb-recon software and changed it in such a way so that we can use in centos and start condor inside it.
• Solved some minor issues.
• Explored about the ways of integrating the Pegasus WMS and studied how this api works and refactored the useful part.

Blockers 🙆🏻‍♂️

Basically this was the most challenging and learning phase of GSoC. I have learned docker from zero because i didn’t have much knowledge about it earlier. My mentor Paula Popa helped me in this phase a lot with debugging the errors in docker and taught me many more things as things were quite new for me in this period. 🤩

And the most dangerous blockers is the black screen of death 😱. Because Docker is a DevOps tool, maintaining and using daemon processes is little difficult at initial stage. Because it uses a lot of resources so clearing up volumes,cached container, large image running container all that requires attention too.

So, I installed ubuntu again and anyway my all data was gone,so I installed all the software from start 😦 and pulled the code and it took a whole day to get back to the previous version of my Lappy. 💻

Final Work Period

Then Final month of my GSoC period started 🥺.

• Completed some changes for the manual part of the project.
• Implemented the workflow list and job list component.
• Completed the detailed readme for the project.
• Done the initial work for the DAX graph.
• Completed all the final changes of the project.

Blockers 🙆🏻‍♂️

In this period, I stuck at how to fetch data from api if it is unsecure and uses basic auth and on connecting the workflow labels with jobs component. But i solved these in a due time and it’s completed. 🏎️

Awww, Now You are thinking these are the only blockers which i met through out my journey then you might be wrong. These are just some which I can recall at the moment or took more time to debug.😹

Obviously, the blockers can make a person more experienced. If you don’t have blockers then may be you are on the wrong path.😉

And yeah!!! My awesome GSoC journey ends here but of course not the open source.🎉🎉

About Mentors 🌟

My mentor Lia Domide helped me a lot to give me the head start as I have mentioned above too. And the first step is always the hardest.

Paula Popa helped me through out my GSoC journey. I don’t have much words to say about her. She was very patient with my doubt and helped me to solve all the challenges. Sometimes my doubt was so dumb that I think about it shall I ask or not?🙂 But she never said anything and helped me in all possible ways and described the detailed flow everytime.

I have never felt discouraged while working on the project because I was learning new things everytime and it’s because of my mentors who always encouraged and motivated me. Thanks again to my mentors for making me a better developer as well as a better person. 😍

Conclusion 😇

So, overall it was an awesome experience working with INCF organisation and i got to learn so much in these three months. Though the GSoC journey ended only, not the open source. I will contribute to my project and will give my best to take it upto the next level in the future.

Suggestions 💡

If you want to do anything in your life the only thing which matters the most is punctuality, consistency and the determination. Always do the hard work first and turned into the heart work with time. If you do the heart work you will not be much busy in your life.😇

Always Do your best and leave the rest.

Dear Reader, If you came so long and think you have got an interesting read. Then don’t forget to give it a clap. 😉

Any suggestion for improvements are always welcome. Reach out to me at **Twitter and [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/punit-batra-757123151/)**.

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