Google Summer of Code 2018 with FreeCAD

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Hello all! This post is my final work product for GSoC 2018 for the FreeCAD project. The main center for communication for FreeCAD is the forums, but we also coordinated things through the #freecad channel on Freenode. The main thread for my project was here.

To summarize my project: FreeCAD is a complex application with an extensive dependency tree. The packaging situation has always trailed the tip of development, which means users don't get to see the best FreeCAD has to offer, and people trying to help new users have to deal with sometimes years-old bugs. The goal was to improve the general ecosystem of the FreeCAD stack, and to cut down on technical debt to make things easier moving forward. After some consideration it was decided to focus on Debian packaging since that would be the most 'ecologically good'.

I began with a rough knowledge of Debian packaging, but now feel competent enough to want to take over the maintenance of Debian packaging for FreeCAD and several other packages within the Debian Science Team, which will improve the free software engineering experience in Debian as well as its derivatives such as Ubuntu and Linux Mint. In fact, I plan on trying to offically become a Debian Maintainer and then Debian Developer. On the 4th of July during the middle of the project I drove to Houston for a GPG keysigning, so the wheels are already in motion.

This post will summarize my work throughout the summer chronologically, mostly linking to emails in the Debian Science mailing list, pull requests on Debian's Gitlab instance or Github, and to some repositories.

More detailed information can be found at https://salsa.debian.org/users/kkremitzki-guest.

Coding Period 0, Community Bonding Period (April 23 - May 14)

Coding Period 1 (May 14 - June 15)

  • Most of the first coding period was spent working on FreeCAD 0.17 packaging, as well as packaging Netgen 6.2.1804 and updating Gmsh to use OCCT, which I packaged prior to GSoC. I didn't finish them quite in time for submission within the first coding period. I also spent time working on packaging PySide 2, which is a dependency for FreeCAD's transition to Qt 5 & Python 3, but backed away after finding it was being worked on by others.

  • May 17: Netgen PR (Remove unnecessary backup files): https://github.com/NGSolve/netgen/pull/15

    • Preparation work for packaging Netgen, which is used as a mesher by FreeCAD.

  • May 25: Discussion of Netgen 6.2.1804 work: https://lists.debian.org/debian-science/2018/05/msg00101.html

    • This was just me announcing that I was working on this so as to help not duplicate work.

Coding Period 2 (June 15 - July 13)

Coding Period 3 (July 13 - Aug 14)

Now that GSoC is done I am excited to continue working within the Debian Science Team. Besides an upcoming FreeCAD 0.18 release, I have several packages I plan to make improvements to and to package for Debian, and ultimately to integrate into future FreeCAD workbenches as part of my plan to make it the ultimate 3D engineering toolbox!

Therefore, I must say thanks to the FreeCAD and Debian communities for working with me, and to my GSoC mentors and GSoC itself for providing me this wonderful opportunity. May it continue providing valuable opportunities for others for many years to come.

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