• 👁 Mono hackfest
  

1. GNOME & Mono Festival of Love 2012

Where: Boston, Microsoft New England Research and Development Center (NERD)

When: Tue, June 26th to Mon July 2th

Primary contact: David Nielsen - gnomeuser@gmail.com

Official twitter: Mono Hackfest - @monohackfest

1.1. Description

The GNOME platform is populated with a number of highly popular applications driven by Mono. The aim of the hackfest is to enable these applications to take better advantage of the GNOME platform as well as to increase their reach.

1.2. Agenda and goals

• Implement Tomboy library.
• Improve/implement GTK#3 and additional GNOME# bindings.
• Banshee porting to GNOME3.
• Pinta general application improvements.
• F-Spot general application improvements.

• Implement Plastic SCM extension for MonoDevelop.

• Debate the future of GTK#. GTK#3 lacks a full time maintainer, GObject-Introspection deemed insufficient for creating .NET APIs. What do we do about it?
• Integrate changes to bockbuild for Banshee builds on Linux, Windows and OS X upstream.

1.2.1. Interest expressed

• Jared has started work on a Tomboy Library which will enable separation between the UI and the backend, this in turn will allow us to deliver Tomboy on GNOME as well as Windows and OS X with greater ease.
• Robert has taken over Pinta and this application needs porting GTK#3, Robert also will work on the Tomboy Library.
• Udesh will perform general work on Banshee, specifically improving the last.fm integration and work on Voice Control (a11y) which he has applied to do under GSoC2012.
• Aaron has expressed interest in doing Banshee work, possibly an rdio extension.
• Jeremie wishes to finish the dbus-sharp work he started at the last GNOME+Mono hackfest.
• Stephen has taken over a maintainer of F-Spot and will work on improving the application overall.
• Andreia has been binding webkit for Mono and committed to finishing the port of Banshee to these.

• Rubén and Jesus will work on Plastic SCM integration with MonoDevelop.

• David will write documentation for Banshee and work on bockbuild (in addition to herding hackers, coordinating blogging and other organizing efforts)
• Alexander will mentor for GSoC and/or work on Banshee's transition to GStreamer# and GTK#3.
• Bertrand will, likely, do Banshee and GTK#3.
• Antonius will be working on his GSoC project reviving Tasque and building the GNOME3 Todo design.

1.2.2. Proposed

• MonoMac porting of Tomboy to provide a native Tomboy on OS X (Jared, Robert)

• Alpha release of GTK#3

1.2.3. Measuring Success

At the end of the hackfest should be able to present:

• Banshee with WebKit sources such as the Amazon store on all platforms (as opposed to being Linux-only presently). Additionally Banshee's move to GTK#3 should be complete and an rdio extension should have been added. Finally all changes required to provide bundles on Linux, Windows and OS X will be integrated in the upstream bockbuild repository.

• An alpha version of Tomboy based on the Tomboy library.

• MonoDevelop will have an extension for the Plastic version control system.

• Both Pinta and F-Spot should be generally improved.

• Tasque should have the outlines of the GNOME3 ToDo application ready.

1.3. Schedule

As Microsoft has been unable to provide us with rooms for the 26th and it is expected to be the arrival date for most travelling attendees. We will be using that day to hold lunch and dinner for those present and debate the future of GTK#, as well as sketch out the work that lies ahead.

• June 26th - Arrival, dinner at Cambridge Brewing Co. Introductions and debate
• June 27th - 2nd of July - Microsoft NERD, Clara Barton, 8am - 8pm

1.4. Attendants

1.4.1. Confirmed:

• Stephen Shaw
• Udesh Liyanaarachchi
• Andreia Gaita
• Jared Jennings
• Robert Nordan
• Jérémie Laval
• Aaron Bockover

• Alan McGovern

• David Nielsen
• Alexander Kojevnikov
• Bertrand Lorentz
• Bojan Rajkovic
• Mike Hutchinson
• Miguel de Icaza
• Antonius Riha
• Rubén de Alba
• Jesus Manuel González

1.4.2. Regrets:

• Cameron White - (unavailable due to school)
• Michael Martin-Smucker - (unavailable due to lack of vacation days)
• Olivier Dufour - (new baby on the way, congratulations Olivier)
• Andrés G. Aragoneses - (unavailable due to lack of vacation days)
• Timothy Howard - (unavailable due to lack of vacation days)
• Gabriel Burt - (unavailable due to lack of time)
• Phil Trimble - (unavailable due to work commitments)
• Mike Kestner - (Unlikely to be available)
• Iain Lane - (Unavailable)
• Alex Launi - (Non-responsive)
• Ruben Vermeersch - (Unavailable, om the other side of the country)

Additionally as Xamarin, the main corporate developers of Mono, are situated in Boston it is expected that a number of their employees will be attending as time allows. The event will also be open to the public so interested people in the region are most welcome to drop by.

1.5. Sponsors

Unconfirmed:

• Aaron will request his employer for a possible small sponsorship.

Confirmed:

• Fluendo have kindly offered 1000$ towards covering travel expenses.
• Microsoft have kindly offered to sponsor the venue (minus the 26th as they are booked up).
• Plural Sight are kindly providing 1 month free access to their online courses to all participants.
• Xamarin have kindly offered to cover the flight expenses for Alan and Jérémie (1700$)
• GNOME have kindly offered to sponsor the event covering flights and board.

1.5.1. Costs

Covered:

Flight costs:

• Andreia - 1000$ (Kindly covered by Fluendo)
• Robert - 1000$ (Kindly covered by First National Parental Bank)
• Alan - 850$ (Kindly covered by Xamarin)
• Jérémie - 850$ (Kindly covered by Xamarin)
• Udesh - 1500$ (Kindly covered by GNOME)
• Stephen - 700$ (Kindly covered by GNOME)
• David - 1600$ (Kindly covered by GNOME)

Board:

Many of the attendees are local and need no board. A large number of attendees have covered board themselves, have arranged a local stay with friends/colleagues, finally some attendees who are paying for their own board have offered to share their rooms. However we still need board for a couple of people.

• Stephen
• David

As the hackfest is set during high season most hotels in the area are fairly costly, the best offer we have found so far is 1750$ from The Kendell Hotel for one room for the duration of the hackfest.

The hackfest costs should be covered in full now.

1.6. How to get there

The Microsoft New England Research and Development Center homepage has an excellent guide to getting to the venue.

http://microsoftcambridge.com/About/Directions/tabid/89/Default.aspx

1.7. Accommodation and food

Dinner on the 26th will be at the Cambridge Brewing Co at 20.00 http://cambridgebrewing.com/

Directions: http://cambridgebrewing.com/about/directions/

1.7.1. Previous discussions, organization threads, drafts, relevant links, etc

https://groups.google.com/forum/?hl=en&fromgroups#!forum/gnome-mono-festival