GSoC 2024 - Neutralinojs

Google Summer of Code 2024 ideas and guidelines - Neutralinojs

What is GSoC?

GSoC (Google Summer of Code) is an international program that motivates developers to contribute to open-source projects. Google awards stipends for contributors who successfully complete the GSoC program. GSoc contributors typically work on open-source development tasks under the guidance of organization mentors. Read more details about GSoC from the official website.

How to become a GSoC contributor?

Anyone (including beginners and students) who is older than 18 can become a contributor with the GSoC 2024 program. Check more details about contributor eligibility from this link.

Follow these steps to get started with GSoC 2024 as a contributor:

• Join Neutralinojs Discord channel using this invitation link.
• Introduce yourself in the #gsoc channel on Discord.
• Become familiar with the main project and sub-projects, start with the documentation, and then codebases.
• Watch framework, JavaScript API, and CLI code explanation videos for detailed codebase explanations.
• Read both contribution guide and code style guide, then start contributing (our recommendation is to start contributing to documentation first to understand the Neutralinojs framework as a user).
• Tell us about tasks that you would like to work on. If you have new ideas, mention them in community channels including your project goals.
• Start drafting a proposal by discussing with mentors.
• Submit your proposal and achieve the planned milestones based on the GSoC program schedule.

How to start writing a project proposal?

• Make sure to follow the above initial steps and become familiar with the project.
• Select a project idea out of the mentioned below
• If you have an idea of your own / want to initiate one , post its summary and goals in a new GitHub discussion thread.
• Wait until project maintainers give a feedback to the post (We can identify possible changes in the early stage).
• Start drafting your proposal based on the Neutralinojs GSoC contributor proposal outline.

What is the project proposal template?

Please create your GSoC proposal according to the following outline:

• Contact details (Name, Country, Email, GitHub username, Discord username, and a small description about yourself)
• Neutralinojs experience (Explain your familiarity with Neutralinojs)
• Contributions (Add links to your pull-requests, issues, and discussion threads)
• Project description (Describe the project idea)
• Goals (Summary of deliverables)
• Tasks Timeline (Decompose your goals into tasks and map with the GSoC timeline)
• Future contributions (How do you plan to contribute to Neutralinojs in the future?)

GSoC 2024 project ideas

We have listed down some crucial tasks below for contributing. But, feel free to discuss your own ideas with us via Discord or email (neutralinojs[AT]gmail.com). You can contribute Neutralinojs framework, CLI, client library and templates.

Thank you for contributing to open-source 🎉

1. Neutralinojs Builder: a community project to generate Neutralino app packages

Neutralinojs CLI generates platform-specific binaries for Linux, macOS, and Windows with a platform-independent resource file. Right now, Neutralinojs application developers need to use various tools to generate application installers (i.e.,: AppImage, NSIS) for each operating system. However, we have no plans to add application installer generation support to the official CLI to keep the CLI implementation minimal and less platform-dependent. Therefore, the Neutralinojs community has initiated a project called "Neutralinojs Builder" to generate application installers. The Neutralinojs builder project is still a POC and experimental, so the idea is to finalize the project based on the suggested technical specification finalized by the framework developers.

Skills required: Node.js, Neutralinojs, Application bundling on operating systems

Difficulty rating: Medium

Project size: ~350h

Mentors: Shalitha Suranga, Athif Shaffy, and Sainath Rao

Suggested technical decisions

• Creating a CLI plugin for the solution.
• Expose a new command to generate application packages.

# Installing the plugin
neu plugins --add neutralinojs-builder

# neu builder <target> <arch>
neu builder nsis --x64 # NSIS setup for Windows x64
neu builder deb --ia32 # Debian package for GNU/Linux ia32
neu builder appimage --x64 # AppImage for GNU/Linux x64
neu builder deb # GNU/Linux Debian packages for all supported CPU architectures

# Use configuration from neutralino.config.json
neu builder

# Removing the plugin
neu plugins --remove neutralinojs-builder

• If the developer run neu builder without any parameters, get the targets from the config file:

"cli": {
  "builder": {
    "linux": {
      "targets": [
        {
          "target": "deb",
          "arch": [
            "x64",
            "ia32",
            "armhf"
          ]
        }
      ]
    },
    "win": {
      "targets": [
        {
          "target": "nsis",
          "arch": [
            "x64",
            "ia32"
          ]
        }
      ]
    }
  }
}

• Even though Neutralinojs provides x64 binaries officially, implement multi-architecture support.
• Implement package targets as internal plugins (Import only required modules based on targets). Try to use modules like targets/deb.js, targets/nsis.js for dynamic loading.

2. Make Neutralinojs compatible with older Windows versions

Issue: https://github.com/neutralinojs/neutralinojs/issues/486

Neutralinojs is tested on Windows 10 and 11, but it is not well-tested with previous Windows versions. The goal of this idea is to update Neutralinojs framework source, build scripts, and DevOps workflow to officially support older Windows versions.

Skills required: Windows API, DevOps, and Configuration

Difficulty rating: Medium

Project size: ~350h

Mentors: Shalitha Suranga, Athif Shaffy, and Sainath Rao

Suggested technical decisions

None -- cause needs to be indentified first

3. NodeNeutralino: a community project to explain Neutralinojs custom backends

The goal is to create a sample wrapper project to guide developers to use a Node.js backend for a Neutralinojs app with the extension API. This project will use Neutralinojs via Node.js child process API and communicate with the Neutralinojs extension API. The NodeNeutralino project's goal is to show developers how to create Neutralinojs API bindings for any language. Using the NodeNeutralino project idea, developers can create GoNeutralino, RustNeutralino, PyNeutralino, etc. i.e., PyNeutralino exposes app.window.show()-like Neutralinojs functions in Python.

Skills required: Node.js and Neutralinojs

Difficulty rating: Easy

Project size: ~175h

Mentors: Shalitha Suranga, Athif Shaffy, and Sainath Rao

Suggested technical decisions

• Implement an API similar to Electronjs BrowserWindow class.

Example NodeNeutralino app code:

const { NeutralinoApp } = require('node-neutralino');

// Accepts all configuration options available in Neutralino.window.create
// Don't manipulate the config file -- use internal CLI arguments instead. (If we update the config, NodeNeutralino will fail to work properly after 'neu build')
const app = new NeutralinoApp({
              url: '/resources', 
              modes: {
                window: {
                  width: 500,
                  height: 500
                }
              }
             });

app.init(); // Initializes the app instance

// Every Neutralino.window API function is available except window.create and draggable regions API
app.window.setFullScreen();
app.window.hide();
app.window.show();

// All other Neutralino APIs are also available
app.storage.setData('testKey', 'testValue');
app.debug.log('Hello');
app.filesystem.createDirectory('TestDir');

// Neutralino.app functions are available directly via the app instance
app.broadcast('testEvent');
app.exit();

• Try to implement without any third-party Node module.
• Make every function asynchronous and throw Neutralinojs error codes properly.
• Use Node.js child process API to spawn Neutralinojs binaries.
• Create an app template for Neutralinojs CLI, so Node.js developers can easily use it via neu create (i.e., neu create -t neutralinojs/node).
• Use a well-manageable project structure similar to the Neutralinojs client library.
• Update neu CLI to automate the development of NodeNeutralino-like templates with the following JSON structure in the cli section if neutralino.config.json:

  "runnerProject": {
    "type": "node",
    "projectPath": "/node-src/",
    "initCommand": "npm install",   // Executed with `neu create`
    "devCommand": "npm start",      // Executed with `neu run`
    "buildCommand": "npm run build" // Executed with `neu build`
  }

• Once developers executed the neu build command, they can run the Node.js project as usual to start the NodeNeutralino app.

4. Fix os.setTray function problem for older macOS versions

Issue: https://github.com/neutralinojs/neutralinojs/issues/615

The os.setTray function fails on macOS Catalina and some other versions. The goal of this task to debug the Neutralinojs macOS binary on different macOS versions and apply a generic solution.

Skills required: Cocoa API and Debugging

Difficulty rating: Medium

Project size: ~350h

Mentors: Shalitha Suranga, Athif Shaffy, and Sainath Rao

Suggested technical decisions

• Add additional configuration code to the webview fork rather than updating window.cpp if possible.

5. C++/JavaScript integration test system enhancements

Issue: https://github.com/neutralinojs/neutralinojs/issues/706

Neutralinojs project has a integration test suite for testing both C++ and JavaScript code at once. Currently, Neutralinojs integration tests covers minimal tests to detect possible function breakdowns. The goal of this task is to write a complete test suite covering all aspects of Neutralinojs APIs and global variables. Also, we expect to run the test suite on Windows CI instance too.

Skills required: Neutralinojs, Unit/Integration testing, Node.js and GitHub Actions

Difficulty rating: Medium

Project size: ~350h

Mentors: Shalitha Suranga, Athif Shaffy, and Sainath Rao

Suggested technical decisions

• Increase test coverage by adding more test cases.
• Test global variables properly.

Contributing

We really appreciate your code contributions. Please read this contribution guide before sending a pull request. Thank you for your contributions.

Contributors

Past programs

• GSoC 2022

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