I work as a developer in Pandora FMS. It’s an Open source monotoring tool which has more than 500000 downloads all over the world. When we found out that we had been picked to participate in Google Summer of code, we were very pleased and excited of participating in such an interesting programme.We met up Mark and another student of the programme in our head office in Madrid. We thought it was very important to meet them before starting to work online in order to clarify all our ideas, study his proposal, add some details and features, and define the line of work. The following week, Mark flew to New Zealand to spend the summer there. Although New Zealand is diametrically opposed to Spain and the time difference was huge, Mark made a mighty effort to adjust his working hours to our schedule.
We had a constant contact during the whole process. Mark used to keep me updated of every single step forward he made, that is why the communication between us was completely satisfactory.
Planification
We created a planning with all the features proposed and an estimation of how long carrying out these tasks would take.
The document above is an example of the the weekly reports that Mark used to send me to let me know about the problems he had, schedule changes or completed taks.
Tracking
We used Integria IMS to follow the progress of the project. It is a software we develop that includes a project management system. I created a list with tasks and assigned them to Mark. Every time he had been working on one of the tasks, he just had to select the option given in the list and explain briefly what he had done. Thus, I can follow his progress easily.
The main goal of this app was to simulate a real project and teach the student how to use a real professional tool.
Tests
The last weeks were very intensive. Mark sent me a version of the application, I tested it and gave him some tips so as he can fix the problems and send the version back to me.
Once the project was done, Pandroid Agent was able to protect the administration operations and report new interesting things such as the services/progress of the device, the number of sent/received sms messages and calls, the inbound/outbound network traffic, the device uptime, software inventory, OS version, signal strength and many other things.
Mark also was so kind of helping us translate the application into more languages. Now, we can offer Pandroid in English, Spanish, Japanese, French, German, Italian, Portuguese and Chinese
Screenshots of the application
Conclusion
The experience was awesome. Mark worked hard and I’m sure he learnt so much and enjoyed the experience a lot. Mark wants to keep developing Pandroid after GsoC. He wants to finish coding the features he couldn’t finish during the programme, and he also wants to develop new ones. He is completely welcome to the Pandora FMS development team and we hope he enjoys writing code for Pandora FMS as much as we enjoyed working with him.
Pandora FMS’s editorial team is made up of a group of writers and IT professionals with one thing in common: their passion for computer system monitoring. Pandora FMS’s editorial team is made up of a group of writers and IT professionals with one thing in common: their passion for computer system monitoring.
