Summer of Code 2008 Project Ideas

[Garrett Cooper]

On Mar 17, 2008, at 3:15 PM, Murray Stokely wrote:

> The FreeBSD Project was again accepted as a mentoring organization  
> for the
> Google Summer of Code.  The student application period will begin  
> next week
> so if you have any ideas for great student projects, please send  
> them to
> soc-admins at FreeBSD.org or post them here for discussion.  A good  
> student
> project has a well defined purpose, some key FreeBSD developers that  
> could
> be identified as potential mentors, and is feasible for a student to
> complete in a few months time.  The existing ideas list is available  
> here :
>
> http://www.freebsd.org/projects/ideas/
>
> If you can suggest something (getting specific parts of valgrind  
> working on
> FreeBSD?) then please provide information in the form of the other  
> projects
> listed on the page as far as difficulty level, requirements, etc..
>
> Thanks,
>
>        - Murray


"Sysinstall" - Isn't this being handled to some extent? I remember  
someone posting an RFC a few months ago. They may need a helping hand  
in coding stuff up, but it sounded like there was a plan already in  
place.

"Improving the USB stack in FreeBSD" - Wasn't HFS working on that too?  
Duplicating work might not be a good thing..

"FAT (msdosfs) infrastructure work" - (extension) Microsoft is coming  
up with a new extension to VFAT (they're calling it x-FAT), which  
supports large devices. There's also FATX (Xbox based FAT-spinoff FS).  
I was just thinking that combining the three into a base library with  
individual extensions might be a good idea.

"NTFS - sync FreeBSD up with ntfs project" - NTFS support in FreeBSD  
is a bit out of date, and panics on some platforms with some  
configurations. Bringing NTFS in the kernel / userland up to date  
would be a welcome improvement for many users.

FYI, I'm still working on the following items:
1. "Add hashed .db support to pkg_tools" (accepted)
2. "Utility for safe updating of ports in base system" (assumed)
3. "Package tools improvements" (assumed)

Not saying helping hands wouldn't be welcome with my work, but I owe  
FreeBSD / GSoC as much of my time for last year and I've committed  
myself to seeing my work through.

Thanks,
-Garrett