Re: GSoC

[Bruno Haible]

Hello Vinay,

> I was thinking of applying for the implementation of gnulib-tool in Python.

It will be exciting to see you apply!

> I've been coding in Python for the last few years.

This is a good starting position for this project, indeed.

> I wanted to know what the  mentors expect out of applicants before the
> submission of proposals.

As explained in the Google FAQ [1], question "What should an application
look like", and the GNU specific guidelines [2], section "Your proposal",
we expect you to think a bit about how you want to organize yourself to do
the job.

In particular, for this rewrite task, where the goal is to have a 'gnulib-tool'
that works identically to the previous one but is more maintainable, you can
ask yourself the questions:
  - How to do the rewrite? (top-down design, or line-by-line translation,
    and/or refactoring)?
  - Whether to write unit tests that check the expected output and, if so,
    when (after, during, or even before the rewrite)?

I await your application!

Bruno

[1] 
http://www.google-melange.com/document/show/gsoc_program/google/gsoc2012/faqs
[2] http://www.gnu.org/software/soc-projects/guidelines.html