DPS909 and OSD600 Fall 2012 Weekly Schedule and Notes

Introduction

The fall is broken into two parts. First, general open source and and community (i.e., Mozilla) specific skills and ideas are taught. Students learn how to deal with the tools, techniques, and practices of their chosen project and its community. Second, we go deep into open web and browser development with a case study.

Part I – Essential Open Source Development Skills and Concepts

Weeks 1, 2 Course introduction

• Course introduction
• Success in this course requires:
  • Willingness to be lost and not panic
  • Curiosity
  • Being driven, persistence
  • Willingness to ask for help
  • Willingness to give others help
  • Independent learning
  • Doing more, much more, than the bare minimum
• Intro to open source
  • Proprietary Licenses, EULAs
    • Microsoft
    • Apple, Richard Dreyfuss reads the iTunes EULA
    • Skype
  • Open Licenses
    • BSD
    • GPL
    • MIT

• Lab - Build Firefox
  • Build Firefox due Sept 13
  • NOTE: instead of a class on Monday Sept 10th, we'll have a work day. Use the #seneca channel on irc.mozilla.org to meetup with other students.

• TODO
  • Create an account on this wiki for yourself (note: requires manual creation)
  • Create a personal wiki page on this wiki, and add a link for yourself to the People Fall 2012 Open Source Students pages
  • Create a blog (wordpress or blogspot or whatever) and create a feed category or tag called "open source"
  • Read the Blog Guidelines for instructions on how to use your blog in the course
  • Add your blog feed and info to the Open Source@Seneca Planet List so that it appears in the OpenSource@Seneca Planet
  • Pick one Closed and one Open license/eula, and read them from start to finish. Pick 3 things that struck you, blog about it and your reactions to the readings this week.
  • Begin learning how to use IRC for communication. We'll cover this in detail next week, but it's better to get started early.

Weeks 3, 4 - Distributed Revision Control with Git

• Introducing Git
  • Client Server (SVN) and Distributed (Git)
  • Snapshots vs. versioned files.
  • Checksums, SHA-1
  • File States:
    • Untracked (not known to git)
    • Tracked: modified, staged, committed
  • The staging area
• Basic Git Commands and Concepts
  • git help <command>
  • git init
  • git clone
  • git add
  • git commit, git commit -m, git commit -a
  • git rm
  • git mv
  • git status
  • git log
  • git diff, git diff --staged
  • .gitignore
  • Branches
    • HEAD, master
    • git checkout, git checkout -b
    • git branch, git branch -a, git branch -d, git branch --merged, git branch --contains
    • git merge
    • git rebase
  • Remotes
    • origin, origin/branch
    • git remote
    • git remote add
    • git fetch
    • git pull
    • git push
  • Github, Pull Requests

• WebVTT
  • WebVTT Spec
  • Intros to Track element and WebVTT:
    • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RoYvr-KXvLs
    • http://blog.gingertech.net/2011/03/29/webvtt-explained/
    • http://html5doctor.com/video-subtitling-and-webvtt/
    • http://dev.opera.com/articles/view/an-introduction-to-webvtt-and-track/
    • http://www.delphiki.com/webvtt/
  • WebVTT on Twitter
  • Online WebVTT Validator
  • Initial work on WebVTT Parser
    • Initial bugs filed on Parser
  • Initial work on track Element

• 0.1 Release
  • As a group we need to write all the tests for the parser. To do this well, we'll have to divide and conquer, manage who is doing what, and not duplicate effort. We'll co-ordinate it all here:
  • 0.1 Release 2012 WebVTT Test Suite
  • Conformance Tests: https://github.com/rillian/webvtt/issues/7
  • Fuzz Tests: https://github.com/rillian/webvtt/issues/8
  • We need a comprehensive set of good and bad test files to match the spec
  • We need a test harness runnable from the build system (i.e., `make check`)

• Readings/Resources
  • Download and Install git
  • Pro Git, online book
  • Git Reference
  • Visual Git Reference
  • Version Control by Example, online book
  • Overview of Git Tutorials (many good ones)
  • Videos
    • Git Basic Tutorial
    • Scott Chacon's more advanced tutorial of git
    • Linus Torvalds at Google discussing git's distributed nature
  • Github
    • github site
    • github documentation

• TODO
  • Learn git!: Watch video tutorials and/or Read chapters 1 and 2 of Pro Git, etc.
  • Install and Setup git locally
  • Clone the WebVTT Parser github repo for your project
  • Learn about WebVTT!: Watch video and Read introductory articles
  • Blog about WebVTT and track
    • What is it?
    • What are you doing for 0.1?
    • What does it involve in the way of technologies?
    • What do you need to learn in order to do it, how will you learn it?
    • What fears or concerns do you have?
  • Get going on your 0.1 Release, see 0.1 Release 2012 WebVTT Test Suite
  • Setup ssh keys on matrix for your github account

Weeks 5-7, Toward a Parser

• We have ~300 tests, now to put them to use!
• What we have in the way of existing implementations:
  • C implementation (Ralph's WIP), see https://github.com/rillian/webvtt/blob/master/webvtt.c
  • C++ (WebKit) implementation, see WebVTT*.{cpp|h} in https://github.com/WebKit/webkit/tree/master/Source/WebCore/html/track
  • JS (validator) implementation, see https://github.com/humphd/node-webvtt/blob/master/lib/parser.js

• What we need:
  • Complete C implementation, done to spec. We'll have a few teams work on this in parallel, and then take the best of what we've learned from each to use in our final implementation:
    • Convert parsing rules into code, see https://github.com/rillian/webvtt/issues/5
    • Need to break this up into a few major sections so people can write different parts (e.g., timestamps, cue options, text, header, etc.)
    • Build HTML from cue text, see https://github.com/rillian/webvtt/issues/6
    • Deal with UTF-8, see https://github.com/rillian/webvtt/issues/2
  • Build system, test harness, Travis CI to drive our work
  • Fuzz Testing, see https://github.com/rillian/webvtt/issues/8 (example of what fuzzing can uncover: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=803924#c7)
  • Test the WebKit parser using our test files, file/fix bugs, see https://github.com/WebKit/webkit/tree/master/LayoutTests/media/track and https://github.com/WebKit/webkit/tree/master/LayoutTests/media/track/captions-webvtt for WebKit vtt tests
  • Opera has just donated tests to the working group, too: http://w3c-test.org/html/tests/submission/Opera/media/track/webvtt/
  • Bug fixes for JS implementation, based on our tests
  • More tests, fixes for existing tests, discussions with W3C to hand our tests over to spec working group
  • Rework and Move http://kyle.barnhart.ca/2012/10/web-video-text-tracks-webvtt.html to proper home: MDN, WebPlatform docs, etc.

• How we'll work:
  • Everyone needs to own something. You can help each other as much as you need/want, but you must own something in the process above. Multiple parallel implementations of the C parser will be done in a sprint, and we'll plan to throw one away. See also Dave Mandelin's great post, https://blog.mozilla.org/dmandelin/2012/10/16/did-you-write-that-code-three-times/ (Dave is the owner of Mozilla's JS engine, SpiderMonkey).
  • File bugs on github where appropriate, use the wiki for things that don't belong there.
  • Be present in class, on irc, in bugs, in your blogging
  • Help each other.
  • Ask lots of questions, don't get stuck and stop. Get stuck and make some noise, keep at it, don't give up.

• TODO
  • 0.2 is due Monday Oct 29th (note: I've moved this from Oct 18th).
  • By 0.2 we need to have a working parser and be on to bug fixing
  • Blog weekly about what you're working on, how it's going, what you're learning
  • Be active on irc
  • In class we'll be discussing code, asking people to show their progress, give demos, help one another, do reviews
  • You need to come to class so we can co-ordinate

Weeks 8-10, Common Parser, Common Tests

• We have a solid base for a parser now (multiple in fact), and can push forward
• 0.3 due Nov 15, 0.4 due Dec 7-14th
• Everyone needs to own something in 0.3--your 0.3 needs to be a code deliverable, no "learning" only outcomes
• Things we need done:
  • Many things still to do on the parser: https://github.com/humphd/webvtt/tree/seneca#todo
  • Autotools (autoconf, automake, libtool) style build system, book is here and guide is here.
  • All current validation tests need to get converted to Unit Tests. What about WebKit/Opera tests, can we "steal" those too?
  • Test Harness
    • JS bindings for C implementation: node-ffi, tutorial is here
    • Unit Test Framework: nodeunit for unit testing, tutorial is here
    • build system integration for `make check`
    • TravisCI integration

• No class Nov 8th, 12th. Use these as work periods for your 0.3 release, get on irc, help each other.
• If you're feeling lost or confused, make sure you do something about it. Don't wait, be proactive. Ask for help, try things, experiment.