GSoC 2012
Anthony Sorace
The fine folks over at Google's Open Source Programs
Office have announced the 2012 edition of Summer of
Code. I intend to submit an application for Plan 9 to again
participate. I'd like your help in making this year a success.
We had one major problem last year. Between Google's
decision to focus on bringing in a larger number of smaller
organizations and our own group's tendency to be pretty
hands-off on marketing, we got an abysmal showing in the
student application process. We got very few applications
(7, from memory), and only 3 of those (at best) were viable.
We were given two slots for student projects.
This is bad for a few reasons. Obviously it means we
don't get as many people exposed to our code and our
community, we don't get as much work done, and we don't
have the opportunity to create new contributors, which is
the fundamental point of GSoC. It also makes our numbers
pretty vulnerable when, as happened last year, one
student goes silent at midterms and never resurfaces.
This year, I'd like to make an explicit call for help from
our community in getting the word out. I know we have
several members who're attached to higher education
institutions; that's really the best route here. It's likely that
your school provides several ways of getting this program
in front of students; It'd be wonderful if you could look into
those. I've spoken to a few of you individually, but I'm sure
there are several more I'm not aware of.
If you'd like help in terms of written text, presentation
outlines, whatever, just let me know. There's a good
collection of such things that folks have done for GSoC in
the past, and I'm happy to point you at relevant ones of
those or help you create more specific things. Just let me
know what you need. A good place to start is the FAQ[0].
In the mean time, I'll be going through the wiki and
giving it a good scrubbing, moving the 2011 pages out of
the way and preparing for 2012. I'd encourage anyone
who's got some free time to take a look at that, as well.
And, of course, we'll need projects! Think about what
would make a good summer-sized project for a student.
And if you're at all interested in Plan 9's participation in
GSoC, I'd suggest joining the Google group for the
topic[1], where most of the discussion in the summer
goes on.
Aside from that one major issue, last year went well. I
was able to get good feedback from a few people during
the application process, mentors signed up without
hassle, reviews of student applications were done well
and promptly. I'd like to thank everyone who's participated
so far, and I hope you'll sign up again once that's open.
Anthony
[0] http://www.google-melange.com/document/show/gsoc_program/google/gsoc2012/faqs
[1] http://groups.google.com/group/plan9-gsoc
abhishek goel
2. What are the ideas 2012 for plan-9
Anthony Sorace
so it's a little tricky to answer your questions specifically. I'll try to give a
overview of the situation, though.
Plan 9 itself is written in C, with a tiny bit of assembler for each platform.
All the applications in the distribution are written in C (or the shell). If you
wish to work on Plan 9 itself, you should have a very good command of
C (note: there is no C++ here, just real C).
In years past, students have done related projects on other platforms.
For example, Plan 9 from User Space is a port of many of the Plan 9
tools and libraries to unix-like systems. 9p, the protocol which ties all of
Plan 9 (and related things) together, has been implemented in several
environments, and there are plenty of interesting projects related to
Plan 9 which have different skill requirements. For example, it might be
interesting to write a 9p file server which ran on Windows and exposed
that system's graphics (similar to last year's devdraw project). Such a
project would require strong knowledge of Windows' programming
environment, but comparatively little of Plan 9's.
The ideas page for Plan 9's 2012 application has not yet been posted.
For some potential examples, you might take a look at last year's
ideas page[1] on our wiki. I hope to have a first draft of the 2012 stuff
up on our wiki some time today.
I'm not clear what you mean by "prerequisite", beyond the skill
discussion above. Like last year, we will again be requiring a basic
proof of competency, but the specifics have not yet been decided.
Anthony
[1] http://www.plan9.bell-labs.com/wiki/plan9/gsoc-2011-ideas/index.html
JIghtuse
On Feb 29, 12:31 am, Anthony Sorace <a...@9srv.net> wrote:
> Plan 9 itself is written in C, with a tiny bit of assembler for each platform.
> All the applications in the distribution are written in C (or the shell). If you
> wish to work on Plan 9 itself, you should have a very good command of
> C (note: there is no C++ here, just real C).
and Plan9 is almost single one. I am third year student of computer
science and I write mainly in C. I think I really can write something
helpful for Plan 9. Btw, is there need to install plan9 to my computer
for participation? I have Debian Wheezy and I compile Inferno for it
and try some of Infrerno utils. Its really funny. I like portability
and some wise of your projects.
Anthony Sorace
If you want to write for Plan 9 itself, you will definitely need Plan 9
installed either on your computer (recommended) or in a virtual
machine (or in 9vx).
> I have Debian Wheezy and I compile Inferno for it and try some of
> Infrerno utils. Its really funny.
Inferno is great, and we'd certainly accept project proposals related
to it, but it's important to understand the differences. They are
related, but not the same. If you want to write applications for Inferno,
you'll be writing in Limbo, not C.
Anthony