Google Summer of Code 2022

GSoC 2022 Project Ideas

Service Mesh Playground

Goal: Create the world’s service mesh playground
Recommended Skills: Golang, React

Meshery’s genesis is that of helping teach people about service mesh technology and enabling to operate this type of cloud native infrastructure confidently. The proposed project is aimed at furthering this mission with interactive API documentation connected to a service mesh learning playground (a running instance of Meshery). This project sits squarely in the crosshairs of our purpose - both for Meshery and Layer5.

The project’s scope

We will create a new set of interactive documentation for Meshery users to both learn how to use Meshery, but also confidently adopt and operate any service mesh. We have a number of community volunteers lined up and committed to collaboration on the creation of this service mesh playground. The technical writer will collaborate with other engineers, working with Swagger and Docusaurus.

• Creation of the Open API specification for Meshery
• Deployment of Docusarous
• Visual design of the site

We will bring support from the Meshery CI, provide a full-time visual and user experience designer and well as three dedicated core maintainers of Meshery. We have one strong technical writing candidate for this project, and estimate that this work will take six months to complete. We will support this technical writer and prioritize any dependencies on the project or community that they may have.

Measuring project success

To measure success, we will track:

• The number of new API playground users (quantitative - tracked by the system)
• The number of repeat visits of the same users (quantitative - tracked by the system)
• The number of failed attempts to invoke an API (signifies poor documentation) (quantitative - tracked by the system)
• Feedback from users on how intuitive the documentation is (qualitative - tracked through user polls)

We would consider the project successful if, after publication of the new API documentation:

• The total count of performance tests run by Meshery increases by 10% (see the current count on https://meshery.io)
• The new number of new Meshery users increases by 20% (currently at ~1,000 users)

Additional Information

Layer5 projects are open source software. Anyone can download, use, work on, and share it with others. It's built on principles like collaboration, globalism, and innovation. Layer5 projects are distributed under the terms of Apache v2.

About Layer5

We want to participate to help first-time open source contributors get started and what will hopefully be a lifelong journey of open source participation. We want to have them have a great first experience, understand what it means to be embraced by empathy and, in turn, to have empathy for others. We are all learning and growing each day. Our organization and community culture has a pay-it-forward mentality. We spend a lot of time with both students and adults alike, tutoring them, supporting them, and watching them grow. We believe that the world has too few truly diverse and perpetually encouraging open source communities. We take our internships very seriously and grow and support interns to dramatically increase their career velocity. We love helping others learn and grow.

Mentoring and seeing others learn and grow is what Layer5 is all about - they grow, we grow. Layer5 is a platform for mentees to hoist themselves up on and leapfrog from. We’re a platform for shared success. Direct participation in GSoC will be most meaningful to the community.

We interact daily over Slack, and have an open source project meeting everyday, which are posted to the community YouTube channel.

Layer5 projects are open source software. Anyone can download, use, work on, and share it with others. It's built on principles like collaboration, globalism, and innovation. Layer5 projects are distributed under the terms of Apache v2.

Google Summer of Code Participation

The key component of these projects is our Community. This community, which you will join as a participant in Google Summer of Code, is improving the world of diverse cloud native systems. Your contributions will affect people you've never met. The Layer5 community includes software engineers, researchers, students, artists, system administrators, operators and web designers -- all of whom will be happy to help you get started.

We believe that all contributors should expect and be part of a safe and friendly environment for constructive contribution. We can more effectively and successfully compare and challenge different ideas to find the best solutions for advancement, while building the size, diversity, and strength of our community.