GSoC 2025: Community Bonding with OpenMRS

I’ve officially started my Google Summer of Code journey with OpenMRS under the project “Improved Implementer Tools in OpenMRS 3”. The community bonding period is meant to get comfortable with the community, tools, and the scope of the project and that’s exactly what I focused on.

What I’ve Been Up To

1. Digging into the Codebase

Although I had already contributed to OpenMRS before getting selected, I used this phase to explore the relevant areas in more depth especially the esm-implementer-tools-app, configuration schemas, and how different types of inputs are rendered and handled. I tested out edge cases related to object editing and translation overrides to better understand the current limitations.

I updated my local setup, tested a few small changes, and noted edge cases that I’ll need to handle later.

2. Community Interactions and Meetings

During the bonding period, all GSoC mentees, mentors, and administrators had a community-wide meeting. It was a helpful session where Jayasanka explained what to expect from the GSoC journey, how to stay aligned with the community, and how to make the most of the experience.

In addition to that, I also reached out to my mentor - Vineet Sharma and had two one-on-one meetings with him. We discussed my current understanding of the project and broke down the major deliverables. These sessions helped validate that I’m on the right track and clarified a few questions I had regarding implementation choices and priority order.

How the Experience Has Been

Honestly, it’s been calm and focused. There’s no pressure to ship anything during this phase, so it gave me time to learn more without the clock ticking. It also confirmed that I picked the right project. It’s something I’m genuinely interested in, and I’m looking forward to seeing the impact these tools can have as they get improved over time.