Hello dear @ronnqvist,
I’m Ashkan, a beginner open-source developer passionate about Swift and iOS development. I love the Apple development ecosystem. Its modern language features, type-safe syntax, and rich APIs make building apps a great experience.
I’ve always dreamed of contributing to tools like SwiftArgumentParser and DocC, which I see as essential parts of the developer workflow. Apple’s native solutions like the DocC really inspire me, especially with plan on future additions like DocC's documentation generation plugin and the integration of OpenAPI. These tools shape the future of the ecosystem, and I’d love to contribute to that growth.
Over the past few days, I explored the codebase, submitted an issue and made a pull request. I have also planned future development contributions and will share a proposal draft with you soon outlining my plans and ideas for the project. Once the pull request is merged, I’m excited to take it to the next level and your insights would be invaluable in guiding the direction.
Currently, I’m working on iOS projects and recently built a CLI tool that uses AI to help with system-wide search tasks. I’m also planning to create a Swift package that brings personalized content recommendations based on user behavior and in app search history in UIKit apps. Alongside this I’m a Microsoft Learn Student Ambassador and a technical writer at freeCodeCamp, where I’m currently writing about building native solutions by leveraging Apple APIs.
I’ve seen your contributions to DocC, Swift Markdown, and more. They’re incredibly inspiring. It would truly be an honor and a pleasure to learn more from you. If you ever have the time, I’d be grateful for any insights you’d be willing to share. Having you as a mentor even in the smallest way would mean a lot as I grow in this field.
Specifically if you want to participate in GSoC for 2025, you need to submit a project proposal before April 8 at 18:00 UTC (next week).
If you're interested in improving command line tool documentation and are already familiar with the code base I would suggest writing up a description of the improvements you want to work on and a breakdown of that work. The Google Summer of Code Guide contains general, good advice about writing a project proposal.
If you still want to contribute to tools like Swift Argument Parser or Swift DocC outside of GSoC I'd be happy to help you to find interesting issues to work on and/or discuss ideas you might have for enhancements and guide you through the process of pitching such an enhancement here in the forums.
That said, similarly to what's asked in Can I participate on gsoc projects as a non-gsoc contributor?, if there's overlap between the improvements you want to work on and an accepted GSoC project, we should want to support that GSoC student and do what we can to make their project successful.
Thank you for your guidance. I have created my proposal draft. Im still working on the proposed implementation section. I want to provide more detail on the implementation process and how we are going to approach problems in depth and be more technical. I would appreciate your feedback on the complete sections of the proposal. I will finalize my draft tomorrow with the changes I have mentioned earlier.
I’ve completed and finalized my proposal for the project and would greatly appreciate your feedback. I’m happy to make any adjustments based on your suggestions.
@ronnqvist I wanted to kindly follow up on the proposal I submitted. Since the application deadline is April 8 which is tomorrow, I’m a bit worried as I haven’t yet received feedback. I’d really appreciate it if you could take a look whenever possible today, as I’m happy to revise it based on your suggestions.
It's reasonable for @ronnqvist to take time off the computer during the weekend or be squeezed for time since this is a bit of a "last moment" submission.
I've given the proposal a look and it looks pretty reasonable from a structure and ideas perspective, please make sure you submit the final revision to the summer of code page. It's not strictly necessary to bounce back and forth with ideas between the mentor, so don't worry too much about it.
@Chamepp please make sure you make the final submission and we'll be reviewing it along with all other proposals when the deadline for submission closes. Thank you and good luck!
@Chamepp You did mention you made some PR in relation to this project? Please make sure to include a link to it as well in this thread as well as the proposal text. These help us evaluate proposals.
As I have already submiited my proposal do I still need to contribute and discuss my ideas further as of this time to imporve my chances? Actually I have my end sem exams for the entirety of the next month and it will be very difficult for me to be active and participate and was wondering is it is ok to take a step back for a few days. I have worked really hard to get the proposal with multiple iterations and dont want that go to waste. I have a few more ideas and things I want to test out right now and I for one can't stop thinking about them but currently exam time doesn't allow me to do so.
We understand students have a tough time right now with exams, so thank you for communicating that.
I think it's reasonable to focus your attention on exams, but it always is nice to at least remain available in case David would like to ask you some questions, no deep research should be required at this point though.
Best of luck with your exams, and keep an eye on the forums is the best you can do right now I think
obviously I will be checking in on the forum everyday and will be available for anything that is communicated to me or is required of me to complete. Will try me best to be present at all times because this project has taken my peak interest over the past few weeks and actually makes me feel hopeful for once that I might be able to make actual impact using my skills which has always my main goal all along.
The amout of code that will be reduced not just from the compiler but also easy to declare a property wrapper in my opinion will be major change and a good one for that.
Like Konrad said, I tend to do things away from the computer on weekends.
I've only had time to skim over the proposal today and like Konrad said; the structure and ideas look pretty reasonable. @Chamepp I can see that you've already submitted the proposal. We'll review it along with all other proposals after the submission closes.
Sorry I didn’t consider it’s the weekend. As I mentioned on my dm to you I was thinking they were likely busy. I truly appreciate their time and support. Thank you again for your feedback on my proposal.
Yes it's totally understandable. Sorry I didn’t mean to disturb you. As I mentioned I didn’t consider its the weekend. Yes I submitted my proposal. Thank you for your time. Can’t wait to hear back from you.
