This page details some of the things students thinking of applying to the NetSurf Project during the Google Summer of Code 2009 should know, do, and keep in mind.
Read the section at the top of our ideas page
It has all sorts of details and advice for students interested in working with NetSurf for Google Summer of Code.
Build NetSurf and play with it for a while
Building NetSurf should be quite easy. You should get the source with Subversion, as described on the developer pages. Don't download a tarball from the websvn interface: it's broken. If you have any trouble building it, ask on #netsurf. The only common gotcha is obtaining the lemon parser generator, it only appears to be Debian and Ubuntu who package it separately. Fedora, specifically, builds it during the creation of the SQLite packages, but then throws it away! Fortunately, it's very trivial to build yourself: just ask Google for "lemon parser generator".
Explore the NetSurf website
There's loads of background information, documentation, and other juicy tidbits on our main website. Explore it thoroughly. Find it at www.netsurf-browser.org.
We have a commitment to support RISC OS
You've most likely not heard of RISC OS. It's possible by the end of your work with us you'll wish you never had. We have a history of supporting RISC OS (it was our first platform) and we have a commitment to continue doing so. Anything you write that's platform agnostic should work well on RISC OS. See Caveat RISC OS for a list of gotchas.
Read what documentation exists
There isn't currently much documentation for NetSurf's source code, but it's all well worth reading. Start with the documents in Subversion.
Remember, we're British
Well, in the most part, anyway. We consider tea, beer and curry all more important than NetSurf. We have a seemingly unnatural fascination with the weather. Don't be surprised by this. Also, our source code has an (unwritten, mostly) rule that things should be spelt in British English. So colour rather than color, etc.
Please don't cut corners in your communications
Contractions like u for you in emails and IRC conversation make us cringe. Please avoid!