Attn: We need GSoC 2014 mentors for Boost!
Dear Boost community, We are now just five days away from the closing date for Google Summer of Code 2014 registration. Last year's GSoC was a huge success, with Google funding work on Boost to the tune of $35,000 and paying over $8,000 in costs for three representatives of Boost to attend the GSoC mentor's summit at Google HQ. As part of filling in our application for 2014, we must supply to Google a list of potential GSoC mentors and potential GSoC projects for summer 2014. We do NOT want a repeat of 2012 when our application was rejected due to an insufficiently long list of prospective mentors and projects! At the time of writing, we have just *eight* prospective mentors, and we need more to be sure of being approved by Google! Therefore, if you think yourself able to mentor a student doing some work on Boost this summer, *please* consider adding a description of the proposed work item and your name to the list at https://svn.boost.org/trac/boost/wiki/SoC2014. If you want to know more about mentoring a Google Summer of Code funded student work before you nominate yourself, please feel free to ask on the main Boost developers mailing list boost@lists.boost.org. Thank you in advance for your time. Niall Douglas (Boost Google Summer of Code admin) Boris Schäling (Boost Google Summer of Code backup admin)
2014-02-08 7:15 GMT+04:00 Niall Douglas
Therefore, if you think yourself able to mentor a student doing some work on Boost this summer, *please* consider adding a description of the proposed work item and your name to the list at https://svn.boost.org/trac/boost/wiki/SoC2014.
I'm in! How about the following projects: * Running regression tests on Android/RaspberyRI/Qemu, writing a documentation about crosscompiing Boost libraries. + Adding automated TravicCI testing scripts to all the Boost libraries * Library for basic integration with spreadsheet applications Excel/LibreOfficeCalc/OpenOfficeCalc and OfficePrograms (Modifying cell, getting results from cells, saving documents, saving in PDF) * Program protection and obfuscation tools (marking part of assembly at compilation, encrypting/decrypting part of the binary on-the-fly, detecting debuggers, detecting emulators and virtual machines, computer identification and gathering hardware specific identifiers...) If there is an interest in those projects, I'll add some description to the GSOC wiki page. -- Best regards, Antony Polukhin
On 8 Feb 2014 at 9:41, Antony Polukhin wrote:
Therefore, if you think yourself able to mentor a student doing some work on Boost this summer, *please* consider adding a description of the proposed work item and your name to the list at https://svn.boost.org/trac/boost/wiki/SoC2014.
How about the following projects: * Running regression tests on Android/RaspberyRI/Qemu, writing a documentation about crosscompiing Boost libraries.
Sounds good for the Ideas section, not enough for a full GSoC. If you include a full port of anything not Android/RasPI compatible to those platforms, you definitely now have a full GSoC (even if the student only partially completes the task this summer). I also suspect Google prefers to fund anything improving things on Android, though I have no proof.
+ Adding automated TravicCI testing scripts to all the Boost libraries
That's definitely a full GSoC project.
* Library for basic integration with spreadsheet applications Excel/LibreOfficeCalc/OpenOfficeCalc and OfficePrograms (Modifying cell, getting results from cells, saving documents, saving in PDF)
I'm struggling to see why Boost here?
* Program protection and obfuscation tools (marking part of assembly at compilation, encrypting/decrypting part of the binary on-the-fly, detecting debuggers, detecting emulators and virtual machines, computer identification and gathering hardware specific identifiers...)
Similarly why Boost?
If there is an interest in those projects, I'll add some description to the GSOC wiki page.
Definitely +1 to the Travis CI work and improving Android/RasPI compatibility and testing. Feel free to add away to the GSoC page. Aside no 1: I may be able to help out with reviewing any Travis CI mentoring as AFIO uses Travis CI extensively. Aside no 2: If we do use Travis CI a lot, we ought to ask the Boost SC to make a regular donation to Travis CI as part payment for the service. I send them EUR5/year for what AFIO uses, they actually wrote me a nice hand written letter to thank me crazily enough. Niall -- Currently unemployed and looking for work in Ireland. Work Portfolio: http://careers.stackoverflow.com/nialldouglas/
2014-02-08 20:45 GMT+04:00 Niall Douglas
On 8 Feb 2014 at 9:41, Antony Polukhin wrote:
* Library for basic integration with spreadsheet applications Excel/LibreOfficeCalc/OpenOfficeCalc and OfficePrograms (Modifying cell, getting results from cells, saving documents, saving in PDF)
I'm struggling to see why Boost here?
Boost is everywhere. We already have libraries that wrap around MPI, manipulate images using 3rd party libraries, unify multiprecision libraries. We have GSOC ideas for physics, databases and audio, so why not office? As I remember something like this library was proposed by Herb Sutter on one of the conferences (can't find the link thou). I see this project as a library that unifies API across different office libraries and allow users to use Excel/Calc/Word/Writer functionality in their own projects (for generating reports, extracting data from odt/doc formats). This library can be useful for banking software, CRMs and many other programs.
* Program protection and obfuscation tools (marking part of assembly at
compilation, encrypting/decrypting part of the binary on-the-fly, detecting debuggers, detecting emulators and virtual machines, computer identification and gathering hardware specific identifiers...)
Similarly why Boost?
Library that provides instruments for a binary to self control. This can be useful for protection against viruses and other attacks; protect programs against reverse engineering; can help post-process binaries (find how a compiled function looks like, put something into the binary after compilation, compute and store checksums of binary). I hope this will open the path for experimenting with binaries (self decompressing binary? self modifying binary?) Boost is a field for experiments, so why not?
If there is an interest in those projects, I'll add some description to the GSOC wiki page.
Definitely +1 to the Travis CI work and improving Android/RasPI compatibility and testing. Feel free to add away to the GSoC page.
OK, I'll add it in a few days.
Aside no 1: I may be able to help out with reviewing any Travis CI mentoring as AFIO uses Travis CI extensively.
Thanks a lot! It'll be great to have your help.
Aside no 2: If we do use Travis CI a lot, we ought to ask the Boost SC to make a regular donation to Travis CI as part payment for the service. I send them EUR5/year for what AFIO uses, they actually wrote me a nice hand written letter to thank me crazily enough.
Let's start from finding a student for this task :) -- Best regards, Antony Polukhin
On 8 Feb 2014 at 22:26, Antony Polukhin wrote:
I'm struggling to see why Boost here?
Boost is everywhere. We already have libraries that wrap around MPI, manipulate images using 3rd party libraries, unify multiprecision libraries. We have GSOC ideas for physics, databases and audio, so why not office?
Well, no reason I suppose. But I will say this: students tend to prefer very well defined work items i.e. working on nearly finished libraries, or extending incrementally already finished libraries. They tend to have substantial problems with anything too greenfield, they get overloaded. You can of course propose the two greenfield projects, but if a student shows interest you need to be absolutely sure they understand fully what writing a brand new library involves. You may remember one project in last year's GSoC where we had very significant problems in one greenfield project because the student kept throwing away and rewriting the project, so in the end while they learned a lot and the GSoC was a success, they didn't actually produce much finished code. Niall --- Boost C++ Libraries Google Summer of Code 2014 admin https://svn.boost.org/trac/boost/wiki/SoC2014
participants (2)
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Antony Polukhin -
Niall Douglas