Google SoC 2009 Idea

[Alexander Leidinger]

Quoting Siddharth Prakash Singh <spsneo at gmail.com> (from Wed, 25 Feb  
2009 07:13:05 +0530):

> Yeah I sent the same proposal to all the *BSD mailing list, because I
> am interested in doing this project . What's wrong in proposing the
> same project in all the *BSD organizations?

As one of the FreeBSD mentors for some GSoC's in the past: nothing is  
wrong with proposing the same project to several *BSD projects, that's  
not unusual and happened in the past several times.

What's not so nice is to propose something without looking at the  
existing features in this area. It's not just saying "I want to do  
something like this". When you submit your proposal to Google, we  
expect that you looked at the corresponding code and at least know  
most of the features. You are not supposed to know each line of code  
or to understand each line of code, but you should know what is there,  
and what you need to do until your goal is achieved.

For example in one of the past GSoC's proposals told that in the XYZ  
subsystem A, B and C "is missing". They contained a timeframe which  
explained how much time the student expects until each feature is  
implemented. For some stuff (API compatibility) even a list of missing  
functions was presented.

You have to understand that in the past we got between 10 and 20  
students during the GSoC. For those 10-20 slots there where more than  
100 proposals (more in the range of 200-300). Those proposals where  
filtered by Google, so we've seen only those, which where not  
immediately rejected by Google because of lack of content. Those  
proposals have to be rated by the FreeBSD committers which are willing  
to mentor students, and they do this based upon several checkpoints.  
We look at the proposal and look if it is actually possible to do what  
is proposed. Not only in general, also during the timeframe of the  
GSoC and by a student. It is also not important that all features are  
completed, so if we think that the student is able to e.g. handle 80%  
of what he proposes and if we also think that this is ok for us, then  
we give some points to the proposal. This means that the student has  
to show that he understands what he is talking about and that he has  
also some insight into what he has to do and some expectation how long  
it takes.

In the end the proposals with the most points (and someone willing to  
mentor this project) are taken. So the better the proposal is, more  
likely it will be that the proposal is accepted.

When you look at the FreeBSD ideas page, you see the bare minimum what  
information needs to be in the proposal (nobody needs to write the  
required skills in a proposal). When we see a proposal which is just a  
copy of what we have on the ideas page, it will not get that much  
points, as it doesn't show if the students really understands what he  
is proposing.

Bye,
Alexander.

> On Wed, Feb 25, 2009 at 1:55 AM, Jordan Gordeev <jgordeev at dir.bg> wrote:
>> Sam Leffler wrote:
>>>
>>> Siddharth Prakash Singh wrote:
>>>>
>>>> On Wed, Feb 25, 2009 at 12:30 AM, Ray Mihm <ray.mihm at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Title: Multicore Aware Process Scheduler.
>>>>>> I have not gone through the process scheduler code of Free BSD.
>>>>>> Hence, I am not yet aware about the current support for Multicore
>>>>>> Architectures.
>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> Talk to jeff at freebsd.org, the author of ULE.
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>> What are your opinions on this project? What is the scope of this
>>>> project?
>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Linux Kernel 2.6.* currently supports SMP, SMT, NUMA architectures.
>>>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Does the current scheduler has support for "CPU affinity/binding",
>>>> mechanism for distinguishing varying capability of CPUs.
>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> These may be there already in ULE, although I'm not sure about NUMA.
>>>>>
>>>>> Ray
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Waiting for your response,
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>> I note you sent this same note to the netbsd mailing lists.  You might
>>> want to do some more investigation before you propose a project.
>>>
>>>   Sam
>>>
>> It was also sent to the DragonFly mailing lists. :-)
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>
>
>
> --
> Siddharth Prakash Singh
> http://www.spsneo.com
> _______________________________________________
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>
>



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