Google Summer of Code Ideas

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About Amahi

We're looking for students with skills in these areas: current technologies like RoR, ruby, python, PHP, as well as next generation technologies, like Go (we use it for streaming to our mobile apps), Node.js, SPDY, javascript frameworks for user interaction, visualization or server services, etc.

Amahi started of a need to keep a personal/home cloud server, keep all my family's photos, videos, documents, and generally any data. It expanded into running applications, mostly web apps, from anything to doing backups to automatic downloaders, media managers and much more.

Amahi is made up of

  • A Linux distribution, currently Fedora, but we supported Ubuntu before as well
  • An installer to help the user bring bring Amahi up in their system
  • A platform, which is a web app that the user uses to manage their server, add apps
  • Apps that are installed by using the platform


At Amahi we use git (see our Github repo) for our version management and the technologies we have ended up using are Ruby, Ruby on Rails, PHP, Linux system internal technologies like system services, configuration areas, web server virtualhosts, databases, DNS, etc., etc.

You can see the Google Summer of Code 2014 page for projects that took place in 2014.

Introduce Yourself, Interact with the Community

If you are you a GSoC student, we will ask that you introduce yourself with this form, so that we know your background and interests.

If you have questions about Amahi or just want to interact, you can contact us via IRC on #amahi on irc.freenode.net (fairly active) or on the amahi-devel mailing list (not as active). Don't forget that these are subject to suggestions, extensions or adaptations. Feel free to discuss or propose new ideas for projects!

One of the most important things is to find an area that you enjoy, using a programming language that you know or that you are willing to learn quickly, so read below or ask questions.

If you are interested in being a mentor, we have five great mentors as of today, but we're very welcoming of more ideas and more mentors!

See the mentors below. Looking for ideas to mentor, see the other ideas below.

Some of the most successful proposals have been completely new ideas submitted by students, so if you don’t see a project on the ideas above that appeals to you, don’t be afraid to suggest a new idea!

List of Project Ideas

We have organized the ideas in groups, depending what area of Amahi they belong in. These groups are not in any particular order. For instance if you are a front-end person who knows HTML and Javascript, the GUI/UX may well be the best fit and we'd love to hear from you!

Platform

Docker Sandboxing for Apps

Description: Use containers to improve app stability, updating and more

Objective: Some apps may be more suitably installed inside a container because they may be too disruptive in a system. Can we you use popular sandboxing environments to contain apps that want to take over things, like Zimbra, or some PBX/VoIP systems, etc.

Skills Required: Docker, Vagrant (for testing), ruby, bash, Mbox

Mentor:: Carlos, Bogdan

Plugin Apps

Plugins are "mini apps" that live inside the Amahi platform and thus little interface need to be developed for them. They are familiar and provide easy, focused value to the user. Ideas:


Mentors: Rod, Carlos

Disk Wizard

Description: Expanding the storage capacity is an important feature of Amahi but as of now it requires advanced (e.g. command line) skills. We want easy disk/partition onboarding. Also add the ability to be asked to mount USB drives as a share when they're connected & connect external shares from for example a NAS with the plugin system using that wizard.

Objective: Finish implementing and especially thoroughly testing an Amahi plugin that will streamline the process by providing a UI for disk management. The plugin should detect if a new disk was added and it should provide a wizard to create partitions and format with the desired file system

Skills Required: Low level system scripting

Mentors: Rod, Carlos

References:

Amahi 9 and Amahi 10

Description: Amahi 9 and 10 are what's next. This is the time to come up with exciting features and ideas that we should put and the GSOC timeline is a perfect match!

Objective: Work closely with the core team to define the features and functionality that we need to implement to get Amahi released. This project is about working on RoR and the Amahi platform core. Some of the core technology will need to be upgraded, like Rails 4, latest Phusion Passenger, possibly replace MySQL for the platform and use sqlite, create a native API to the platform that can be used by other apps, like mobile apps. Other ideas include beefing up security and provide support for Amahi hosting on the cloud. Features:

  • fully convert the front-end to bootstrap and make sure we can install bootstrap themes and have a consistent and responsive look and behavior
  • make it even more modular and cleaner (at the moment we still have some things that really belong in plugins but still are in controllers/views of the main app)
  • possibly using a new metal layer instead of passenger - especially ones that do not take a long time to reload, could be puma, i also like thin, maybe others
  • better initialization ... like a more standard (wordpress-like) initialization wizard (initially there are no users, we need to create an admin user and perhaps ask a few questions and integrate with amahi.org)

Skills Required: RoR, ruby, JS, CSS, HTML5, Bootstrap

Mentors: Carlos, Rod

Backup App Data and Settings

Description: When new versions of Amahi come out, a drawback of Amahi is that it's hard to backup the settings (e.g. partitioning) installed applications and their user data

Objective: The plugin should allow an administrator to backup any application data either on an external media or in the cloud(e.g.: Dropbox, Google Drive, etc).The restore process should check if the application is installed on the HDA and if not it should be automatically installed from the AppStore before the user data is restored.

  • Create an Amahi plugin that will allow backup and restore of the user data for apps installed from the AppStore
  • Centralizing app data/configs - link them to app folder instead.
  • "Destructive" update awareness
  • Ability to list, outline data directories for backups/upgrade check


Skills Required: System scripting

Mentor: Rod, Carlos

Mobile

Mobile is a great topic and there are a lot of opportunities here within Amahi.

Android App Improvements

Description: Add functionality or fix bug to the Android app

Objectives:

  • Updates: update material design, update deprecated (or soon to be) calls, provide backwards compatibility
  • Add Chromecast support for media playback (videos, audio and pictures)
  • Make the application compatible with Android TV
  • Secondary user login for the app
  • Add upload functionality, e.g. automatically upload photos to your HDA
  • Auto backup your phone to your HDA (reference: "Helium")

Skills Required: Java, Android framework

Mentors: Carlos, Bogdan

Reference: Amahi Android Github repo

iOS App Improvements

Description: Add functionality in the iOS app

Objective: enhance the iOS app to at least match or surpass the Android app

Things to be implemented:

  • Sharing of files
  • Music metadata display
  • Continuous music play
  • Secondary user login
  • Upload functionality


Skills Required: iOS programming

Mentors: Carlos, Rod

Reference: Amahi iOS app

Backend Improvements

Description: One requested feature for our mobile app (iOS and later Android) is the ability to browse apps within our mobile app while remote. This is supported locally, but not remotely. Our server side of the app needs to be setup to proxy specific webapps that the user has installed. Collaboration with the iOS/Android devs will also be necessary to prototype it. Technically, this project consists of add functionality to our reference proxy (written in Go) to do transparent HTTP proxying for individual webapps separately. It's not a mobile project in the sense of being on a mobile OS.

Objective: The following features need to be implemented:

  • NPN negotiation, compliance to http/2
  • More edge case tests.
  • Server push
  • Actual implementation of priorities (everything is one priority at the moment)
  • Extensive error handling for all possible rainy-day scenarios specified in the specification
  • Support for other than HTTP GET frames, i.e. POST, PUT or any request that has a body

Details can be found on SPDY.

Skills Required: GO programming

Reliability

CI Server for Apps

Description: App reliability is critical for Amahi. We have been striving to develop a customized CI (Continuous Integration) server for testing apps.

Objective: Develop up a CI server for apps (we have been calling a prototype "the app grinder") . The goal is to achieve 100% app installation and reliability. An important goal is to support a tester program for Amahi. We have a number of ideas of what we want to achieve -- how to design the CI server so that testers can easily see their passes, failures and anything in between.

Skills Required: Capybara, ruby, Webkit, Selenium, maybe Vagrant and system scripting. Other possible technologies could be Jenkins, Travis, etc.

Mentors: Carlos, Bogdan

Apps

Innovative app or app packaging and app-related projects.

Improved VPN Security

Description: Improve the security of our OpenVPN and IPSec VPN apps. Examples are allowing users to generate their own certificates, identify weak spots and strengthen them.

Objective: For the example of generating their own certificates, build a wizard to allow users to create and manage their certificates. Another goal would be to provide logging of VPN connections, so that the user can see the activity on their VPN.

Skills Required: keen sense of security settings, certificates

Mentors: Rod, Carlos

Caching Server

Description: a caching proxy to save on bandwidth

Objective: Develop and plugin that will allow an administrator user to control the traffic for specific devices inside the network. This app (or possibly a plugin) should display all the connected device as well as provide the ability to search by name/MAC address. For a selected device the administrator should:

  • Limit access between certain time intervals
  • Limit bandwidth
  • Block certain websites (either on an individual basis or read them from a file)
  • Limit traffic

Skills Required: system configuration and scripting

Mentors: Carlos, Rod

Network Groups

Description: Develop a plugin to allow network device grouping. This will be the framework for future plugins.

Objective: Allow an administrator to group network devices in groups with different permissions. Limit the user access to certain apps based on the group settings.

Skills Required: RoR, system programming

Mentors: Carlos

Create UI and package it for RSnapshot

Description: Make a UI for rsnapshot

Objective: RSnapshot is a great application to backup local data, making efficient use of storage as well as CPU resources and can handle a lot of data. A one-click app that includes a UI to set up and manage RSnapshot backups. Also, possibly backup to GDrive, S3, other cloud solutions

Skills Required: RoR, system programming

Mentor: Rod, Dag, Carlos

References

Package VoIP and/or PBX system

Description: A frequently requested application that is hard to package and configure is a voice over IP telephony app. Related to this is also a PBX system

Objective: configuring PBX or a VoIP system can be complex. There are several hurdles to this. The task is to evaluate all

Skills Required: app scripting and packaging, telephony, VoIP, messaging systems

Mentors: Carlos, Pat

References:

Installer

Improved Installation

Description: Improved installation experience for users.

Objective: Configuration and installation of Amahi can be painful for some percentage of users. Many of them do not know much or care for Linux. We want to make the installation as smooth as possible not just for them, but for more even more regular (non-techy) users. Ubuntu has some challenges of its own to make it work without dropping the users to the command line.

  • Create a new Anaconda node for Amahi configuration
  • Similarly for Ubuntu
  • Make images that enable booting from USB devices "out of the box"
  • Detect sub-optimal configurations of disk partitions and provide feedback to the user
  • Measure and analyze how users get tripped on installation and create ways to tackle these issues, bringing installation issues down


Idea: use this package to help improve installation networking issues.

Skills Required: Python, Linux boot process internals, creating ISO images

Mentors: Carlos, Rod

User Onboarding

Description: Help users get their HDA up and running with minimal interaction after installation

Objective: Happier users. The idea is to implement an automated configuration check tool. The current Amahi Interactive Troubleshooter can be used as a starting point. The tool should:

  • check if the installation was successful
  • compare current settings against the expected settings
  • automatically fix inconsistencies with no user interaction

Skills Required: RoR, scripting, netflow capture, dhcping scripting

Mentors: Carlos, Rod

Ubuntu 14.04

Description: Get Amahi ready for Ubuntu 14.04

Objective: Further development on the Amahi platform to be able to install the same applications and have the same features as the Fedora based version. A new install CD package that allows you to add Amahi functionality to Ubuntu 14.04 (LTS)

Skills Required: ruby, ISO creation

Mentor: Carlos, Frans

Networking

Clustering Amahi Servers

Description: Create a system to create data nodes that integrate with the Amahi API as well as auto mount as NFS or SMB shares to allow the usage of applications through locally mounted shares (such as gallery, subsonic etc). This would allow you to connect Windows / Linux computers as data nodes. Perhaps an installable agent?

Objective: An installer that integrates with Amahi (a stripped down version of Amahi?) and a management pane in the main amahi server that allows you to add a server by IP or DNS name.

Skills Required: Ruby, misc system scripting

Mentors: Carlos

Rolling Distribution

Description: Make Amahi a rolling distribution

Objective: Being able to upgrade Amahi versions without having to upgrade OSs is very appealing and a huge win.

Skills Required: major Linux packaging mojo, ruby, system scripting, ISO packaging, repo creation

Mentor: Carlos

GUI and UX

This area can offer a lot of possibilities for ideas. A lot can be improved in Amahi to make the users happier. We are listing one topic here, but there are many, from a better front-end HTML (responsiveness, html5 compliance, browser compatibility, etc.), to CSS re-implementation, to allow for nice JS libraries to be used in plugins easily, like D3.js, Highcharts, etc., etc.

Better Theme Integration

Description: Our theme system is pretty good, however, it's very customized and we could do better with a more responsive front-end

Objective:

  • allow the usage of popular themes out there, like themes for Drupal, Wordpress, etc., with minor configuration changes, or even directly
  • allow the integration of mobile themes
  • provide hooks to detect mobile devices and present a mobile theme


Skills Required: CSS, HTML5, ruby, RoR

Mentors: Carlos

Innovative Documentation

Description: Document Amahi in innovative ways, like screencasts, extra videos, hands-on guides, etc.

Objective:

  • Improve the way users get value from Amahi by instructing how to do typical operations
  • It could be with screencasts, hand-on guides, videos, etc.

Skills Required: management of teams, organization and documentation

Mentors: Carlos

Other Ideas

  • Add features to our popular Amahi app for iOS: Offer to display image-heavy folders and shares within a "gallery" or collection view, add the ability to navigate and stream shares containing music in a streamlined way, Dynamic search, SPDY support, for both remote and local queries, support for accessing HDA web applications within Amahi for iOS, share folders and files from your HDA to other apps or users, support for HDA user permissions (share & web app restrictions, etc.). Mentors available: Carlos
  • PHP API: make a native PHP SDK for the Amahi platform, so that PHP apps (we have a lot of them) can more easy be integrated
  • Integrate a mail server as an app. Identify any settings or configuration that need to be implemented in the platform
  • Router integration, UPNP, direct control
  • Port AES (Amahi Energy Server) to the latest Amahi
  • Integration of LDAP as a back-end management system, calendaring
  • Feature development (examples):
  • Calendaring, and integrated contact manager application. Possible options: 1) ownCloud based or 2) Apache carddav
  • For the more design-oriented, build mobile theme(s)
  • Documentation or screencasts/tutorials


Plus, of course we are open to suggestions. Open a dialog. We're happy to discuss and determine a suitable project.

Amahi is a platform that will support the deployment of other open source applications. If you are interested in the integration of applications in your area of interest, just contact us with suggestions.

Mentors

This is a list of committed mentors. If you are interested in mentoring, let us know via IRC (mention the nicks below):

  • Carlos Puchol (cpg, PST, GSOC admin): team lead for Amahi, experience in RoR, Go, Ruby, RoR, system scripting/development, app packaging, C, C++
  • Bogdan Mitrea (megabitdragon, CST, GSOC admin): Android, Java, app packaging, system programming,C , C++, community lead
  • Rod Runyon (bigfoot65, CST): app lead for Amahi, system programming, app packaging, reliability, documentation, support
  • Frans Meulenbroeks (eFfeM, CET) ubuntu, ARM support, FC23, C, Linux issues, networking
  • Chris Pick (cpick, PST), iOS app


Reference: GSOC mentoring page.

Reference

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