Google Summer of Code 2022
Welcome to Google Summer of Code with MIT App Inventor.
We have an application process in addition to Google's application process. You must do both. Please apply to Google for GSoC through Google’s Website. All applications have to go through Google.
We will be receiving applications within the timeframe allocated by GSoC. Please consult the GSoC website for details. For bite-sized issues to work on as part of the community introduction phase, please see the help wanted issue list.
This is the list of projects we are proposing for the summer; you can choose one or more projects from the list, or come up with your own project. Also note that these projects could be worked on outside GSoC if you would like to volunteer during the summer.
Our application form for GSoC 2022 is here. Additional instructions are linked from the application form.
This is what you might expect from projects in the list below:
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Brief explanation: An explanation of what the project is about. Please note that this might be just an idea, and as part of your work in the project you will be defining and scoping the project.
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Technical Difficulty: A rough idea of how difficult the project is given knowledge of the language but not necessarily the knowledge of the frameworks involved.
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Estimated Time Commitment: An estimate for the total number of hours required to be spent on the project to produce a working solution with testing.
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Knowledge Prerequisite: A brief list of the technologies needed in order to work on this project.
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Potential Mentor: The currently active team member you will probably be working with during the summer (this can also change depending on which projects are chosen).
Several projects involve the App Inventor Blocks editor. The main language used in these projects is JavaScript with the Google Closure and Blockly libraries.
Knowledge Prerequisites: javascript. The Blocks Editor is written primarily in javascript. Java and GWT are also useful. Familiarity with the Google Blockly sources is also a plus.
Brief Explanation: A feature allowing a user to drag-select multiple blocks and move them as a group as shown in the example image
Technical Difficulty: Medium
Estimated Time Commitment: 350 hours
Knowledge Prerequisite: JavaScript, familiarity with Blockly a plus
Potential Mentors: Evan Patton or Li Li
Brief Explanation: Implement search of the blocks workspace using the Blockly Workspace Search plugin, making App Inventor specific adjustments as needed.
Technical Difficulty: Medium
Estimated Time Commitment: 175 hours
Knowledge Prerequisite: JavaScript, familiarity with Blockly a plus
Potential Mentors: Li Li
Brief Explanation: Implement new blocks for the App Inventor community commonly found in functional programming, such as map, reduce, etc.
Technical Difficulty: Medium
Estimated Time Commitment: 350 hours
Knowledge Prerequisite: JavaScript, Scheme
Potential Mentors: Hal Abelson or Evan Patton
A number of improvements for the Designer view. This part of the system is built mainly with Java using the Google Web Toolkit.
Brief Explanation: App Inventor provides a forum for support inquiries. Often, people using App Inventor are looking for issues debugging an issue in their projects. This feature would provide a user interface to open an issue in the forum directly from App Inventor and include a copy of the active project.
Technical Difficulty: Medium
Estimated Time: 175 hours
Knowledge Prerequisite: Java, familiarity with GWT, comfortability with REST APIs, specifically the Discourse API
Potential Mentors: Evan Patton or Jeff Schiller
Brief Explanation: App Inventor is in the middle of a user interface overhaul. As part of the overhaul, we want to add project folders to the Explorer view, including moving projects via drag-drop and compatibility with mobile screens.
Technical Difficulty: Medium
Estimated Time: 175 hours
Knowledge Prerequisite: Java, familiarity with GWT, UIBinder, CSS
Potential Mentors: Susan Lane
Brief Explanation: App Inventor has properties feature called Blocks Toolkit, which is found on the Screen1 properties of a project. This is a powerful feature that allows the user to work with a subset of the existing components and blocks. The full array of App Inventor features can be overwhelming, particularly to beginners. The problem is that the feature as it exists in properties can't be used by the beginners who need it most. We would like the user to be able to choose a toolkit from the New Project wizard. Doing so will require a refactor of the project creation logic.
Technical Difficulty: Medium
Estimated Time: 175 hours
Knowledge Prerequisite: Java, familiarity with GWT
Potential Mentors: Susan Lane
These projects involve component code that runs on Android devices. Knowledge of Java and Android is a requirement for these projects.
Brief Explanation: Implement a new component for App Inventor that can embed machine learning models trained with Google's Teachable Machine.
Technical Difficulty: Medium
Estimated Time: 175 hours
Knowledge Prerequisite: Java, Android development
Potential Mentors: Evan Patton or Li Li
Brief Explanation: Augmented reality components have been built for App Inventor's iOS companion. Equivalent components need to be built for Android. Interested parties should read the M.Eng. thesis by Nichole Clarke.
Technical Difficulty: Hard
Estimated Time: 350 hours
Knowledge Prerequisite: Java, Android development
Potential Mentors: Evan Patton or Li Li
While not as glamorous as some of the other projects, testing is critical to making sure regressions are added to the App Inventor code base. Projects in this category explore ways in which to shore up App Inventor's test suite to ensure that future changes don't negatively impact end users.
Brief Explanation: App Inventor has implemented a JUnit framework for automated testing of our Java codebase. However, great strides still need to be made in testing coverage of existing code, including the design of meaningful automated tests.
Expected Results: Accurate, meaningful test suites for at least one existing component in App Inventor that demonstrates comprehensive knowledge of the functionality of the component. Preferably, this will be complete for several components, but exact scope will be set as we discover together the effort and time involved.
Knowledge Prerequisite: JUnit, Roboelectric Android framework
Technical Difficulty: Medium
Estimated Time: Anywhere from 80 hours up to 175 hours depending on the number of tests written once the infrastructure has been updated
Potential Mentors: Evan Patton, Susan Lane, or Jeff Schiller
Brief Explanation: App Inventor uses the Google Web Toolkit (GWT) to power a large part of its web interface. This code is in much need of unit and behavior tests. Potential projects will make use of GWTUnit and PowerMock to increase test coverage of the user interface.
Knowledge Prerequisite: JUnit, Java, familiarity with GWT and PowerMock (https://powermock.github.io/) are a plus
Technical Difficulty: Medium
Estimated Time: Anywhere from 80 hours up to 175 hours depending on the number of tests written
Potential Mentors: Susan Lane, Li Li, or Evan Patton
This is a list of more research oriented projects. They might not be merged into the main repository straight away, but prototyping projects are very important of App Inventor development and have evolved into fully fledged features over a longer period of development.
Brief Explanation: App Inventor provides the ability to extend the system with custom components written by third parties. However, not all functionality is nicely wrapped up in a component. Built-in blocks define operations in the language (e.g., math operators) that can be used in any context. This project would explore making custom blocks that could be added to App Inventor.
Expected Results: A working extension that performs a useful task that can be loaded into App Inventor.
Knowledge Prerequisites: JavaScript and Scheme required, Java knowledge a plus
Technical Difficulty: Hard
Estimated Time: 175 hours
Potential Mentors: Evan Patton or Jeff Schiller
Brief Explanation: We have the ability to add external extensions to App Inventor. We would like to host a library of potential extensions that people might want to add to their projects. This might include extensions that use Bluetooth Low Energy to interface with the Internet of Things. Remote sensors, Arduino’s or other external devices that someone might want to interact with from their phone or tablet.
Knowledge Prerequisite: Java and JavaScript
Technical Difficulty: Medium
Estimated Time: 140 hours of development with some time for user acceptance testing
Potential Mentors: Jeff Schiller or Evan Patton
Brief Explanation: A previous GSOC project explored implementing visible extensions for App Inventor using nested iframes to embed component logic. Before this can be deployed, the security needs to be hardened so that malicious extension code is not run in the user's browser.
Knowledge Prerequisite: JavaScript, browser security mechanisms, familiarity with XSS and other security issues
Technical Difficulty: Difficult
Estimated Time: 350
Potential Mentors: Jeff Schiller or Evan Patton
Brief Explanation: Allow users to upload sets of assets to be imported easily into different projects.
Expected Results: A working extension that performs a useful task that can be loaded into App Inventor.
Knowledge Prerequisites: JavaScript and Scheme required, Java knowledge a plus
Technical Difficulty: Medium
Estimated Time: 175 hours
Potential Mentors: Evan Patton or Jeff Schiller