Hackfest 2016

[brynn]

Hi Friends,
Inkscape developers are finalizing plans for Hackfest 2016, which will happen April 11th through April 13, 2016.  Hackfest, which usually happens in the 3 days preceding the annual Libre Graphics Meeting, is an opportunity for them to meet in person, for 3 days of intense hacking, discussions and decision-making.  This year, LGM will be in London, and Inkscape's Hackfest will be in nearby Leeds, England. 

Any programmers who might be interested in participating can find information on this wiki page (and related/linked pages).  There are funds available to help with travel and accomodations, if you have the right qualifications.

Even for some Inkscape users who are not programmers, this is an exciting time, to learn in what ways Inkscape will be improved, as a result of all the work done in not just these 3 short days, but also in the stream of inspiration and motivation which follows.  For those several programmers who attend, it must be the highlight of the year, for their participation in the Inkscape community.

If you'd like to support these developers, by making a donation to help cover their travel and accomodations, please visit this page.

[brynn]

Sounds like a huge amount of work is being done at Hackfest:

Day 1

Day 2

Not to get too technical, but I counted 56 new changes to the Inkscape code that have come through in the last 2 days.  I have no idea what the average number of changes per day is.  But before those 56 changes, there were something like 16 changes in the previous 10 days (month of April to date).

So that's something like 1½ per day.  I suspect activity has been heighten, as Hackfest approached.  And just glancing through the list of changes, it looks like sometimes a few days can go by without any new changes.  So anyway, TONS of work is being done 

Note that "new changes" is how I describe it when a developer uploads new code to Inkscape.  It could be bug fixes, or new features, or a LOT of what I refer to as quality control, and keeping the code strong and up to date.

I got these links from a message posted to the User mailing list.  This is the link with the changes listed.  If you know anything about the technical side of Inkscape, you might be able to understand what some of them are.  http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~inkscape.dev/inkscape/trunk/changes.

Hhmm....I'm tempted to do a challenge/contest of any kind of image to thank developers....maybe something like a greeting card or something??

Edit
Here's link to that challenge:  http://forum.inkscapecommunity.com/index.php?topic=337.0

Or perhaps some people would be more inspired to donate to the Inkscape Fund, to help with Hackfest 2017?  (https://inkscape.org/en/support-us/hackfest-2016/)

[brynn]

And here's the final summary, directly from Hackfest Hackers:

https://plus.google.com/+inkscape/posts/1xZ5aDyCMU2

  Developers