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 * Improve the '''boot system''': ''speed up and make it dependency based. See discussions on [http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/initscripts-ng-devel/ the initscripts-ng list] and [http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts LSB init script page].'' Some [http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/pkg-sysvinit-devel/2006-January/000542.html project ideas] are already written. (pere)  * Improve the '''boot system''': ''speed up and make it dependency based. See discussions on [http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/initscripts-ng-devel/ the initscripts-ng list] and [http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts LSB init script page].'' Some [http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/pkg-sysvinit-devel/2006-January/000542.html project ideas] are already written. (pere) -- multiple proposals there, don't propose this also
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 * Rewrite [http://packages.qa.debian.org/debian-cd debian-cd], the scripts used to create CD images. The current debian-cd works but has many flaws/limitations. Check out old discussions on the subject:
   * http://lists.debian.org/debian-cd/2004/01/threads.html#00025
   * http://lists.debian.org/debian-cd/2004/01/msg00045.html
   * Many people used modified version of debian-cd (Ubuntu, Debian-Edu, ...) and the new design should suit them all.
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 * Make '''reportbug''' enhancements: ''graphical and/or webbased, so its easier for user to report''  * Make '''reportbug''' enhancements: ''graphical and/or webbased, so its easier for user to report''t
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 * Add gnutls support for '''openldap2.2''': GnuTLS support is only available for 2.1. OpenLDAP 2.2 and later will need substantial reworking of that support, and without it, the OpenSSL licensing issues cause too many licensing conflicts in Debian for it to be safe to provide a -dev package that people can use widely.
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 * Create a Python/GTK/QT '''app to manage Debian BTS''': ''would queue actions and then send an e-mail to the BTS to commit changes, make it easier to browse bugs, cross-reference, tag/update/close, etc''  * Create a Python/GTK/QT '''app to manage Debian BTS''': ''would queue actions and then send an e-mail to the BTS to commit changes, make it easier to browse bugs, cross-reference, tag/update/close, etc'' -- proposed multiple times
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 * Implement netboot in Debian Live  * Implement netboot in Debian Live (already implemented)
 * Implement a script frontend to Debian Live that creates Live netbooting media, ie. CF/USB Flash, Floppy, CD-ROM (for use in networks where no DHCP server can be used). Such media would contain a kernel, initrd and a hard-coded IP address inside the bootloader's config. file.

This wiki page is created to make it easier to plan and coordinate Debian's involvement in the [http://code.google.com/soc/ Google Summer of Code 2006].

Timeline

  • May 1st - 8th: Student proposals accepted by Google
  • May 6th - 13th: DebCamp in Mexico

  • May 14th - 21st: DebConf in Mexico

  • May 21st: Deadline for Debian to accept proposals
  • May 23rd: Google publishes list of accepted proposals
  • June 30th: Mid-programme student evaluations due from mentors
  • August 21st: Student projects due
  • September 5th: Final mentor and student evaluations due

Contact info

Information on how to register to be a mentor was posted to debian-private, contact baruch (baruch@debian.org) if you need more info. Please note that you should not register as a mentor if you intend to participate as a student.

For students, if you have questions or want to discuss the project you want to do you can mail baruch, discuss it in the debian-project mailing list, or join the #debian-soc channel on OFTC.

If you would like to work on one of the projects below, as a student participating in Google's summer of code, please go submit your application on this webpage: http://code.google.com/soc/student_step1.html

Mentors should login to the system read, review and comment on the projects at http://code.google.com/soc/debian/open.html

Possible Projects (in () possible mentors)

(also see [http://www.debian.org/devel/todo/ the general TODO list] and the EtchTODOList)

General

  • Improve/unify the QA websites: packages.qa.d.o, qa.d.o/developer, dehs, etc

  • Create a better environment for regression/unit tests (tbm)
  • Improve the system to handle WNPP: including expiry of ITPs, checking that orphaned packages have correct maintainer fields, etc. (DavidMorenoGarza)

  • Create a collaborative repository of meta-informations about sources packages (including upstream URL, URL of upstream VCS, URL of upstream BTS, debian/watch file, etc.) (RaphaelHertzog)

  • Help [http://dehs.alioth.debian.org Dehs project] to accept watch submitting and maintaining in an external framework instead of the single deb packages. Improve the Dehs postgres Db structure to optimizing query speed. Create rss feed with useful information from Dehs data. Collaborate with devscript maintainer to specify in a standar way the upstream news/changelog file in watch file and write with devscript package maintainer an official policy about watch file. Optimize, clean and standardize source code. (Stefano Fabri)

  • Add improvements to the BTS LDAP gateway like last-change-dates, last-mail, full-content, etc. (DavidMorenoGarza)

  • A program to sanity-check Debian CD and DVD images, like lintian/linda do for packages. (SteveMcIntyre)

  • BTS interface in kmail: on display of a bts related mail (headers!), add buttons like 'view this bug', 'close/reopen this bug' (would ask for version first), 'edit bug tags', 'set severity', 'retitle', ... to the toolbar (cmot, just a funky idea...)
  • Web frontend for QA applications (linda, lintian, piuparts) and other packaging utilities (like pbuilder) Some work has been done in that topic, and it could be useful for CollaborativeMaintenance too

  • Improve Britney; britney is the name of the scripts used to update Debian's testing distribution: it automates some of the hard problems of Debian release management. See [http://azure.humbug.org.au/~aj/blog/debian/britney AJ's blog] and the [http://www.debian.org/releases/testing/ general info about Testing] (aba)

  • Create a "Migration Tracking System" which can be used to track the various migrations that are happening. It should have a web interface as well as a mail interface. It should transparently make use of debbug's usertags to keep track of the bugs related to a specific transition. (RaphaelHertzog)

Package management

Individual packages

  • Rewrite [http://packages.qa.debian.org/debian-cd debian-cd], the scripts used to create CD images. The current debian-cd works but has many flaws/limitations. Check out old discussions on the subject:

  • Add IPv6 support to vserver (aba)

  • Improve support of pinning in apt ["real" dependency resolver, better docs, graphical interface (?), allow matching in Packages, etc] (aba)

  • Make reportbug enhancements: graphical and/or webbased, so its easier for user to reportt

  • Improve wpasupplicant: Split out the roaming functionality from wpasupplicant and associate based on what is known to the system from /etc/network/interfaces. (?KyleMcMartin)

  • Fix and enhance apt-listbugs: There are quite a few seemingly simple bugs and wishes in the BTS, but it's seen no updates for 10 months. A few small changes would make it much more useful. (RaphaelHertzog: probably too limited in scope to be a good project).

New applications

  • Create a Python/GTK/QT app to manage Debian BTS: would queue actions and then send an e-mail to the BTS to commit changes, make it easier to browse bugs, cross-reference, tag/update/close, etc -- proposed multiple times

    • (StefanoZacchiroli: this overlaps with the make reportbug enhancements point above. What about splitting the above one in two: (1) provide a gui for reportbug, (2) provide a web ui for reportbug? If, besides interfaces, more features for reportbug are requested they should be described separately as well)

    • (PhilippKern: Managing bugs is likely to be separate from reporting bugs, it's rather a superset. It may be however implemented in the same application. But then it should only expose the bug management features to end-users if they want it to. I already volunteered to take this one, if it would be a valid project request, in private to aba, as he's the creator of the bts2ldap gateway. Not reply yet, though.)

  • Create a user-friendly security-update notifier/installer

  • Package and integrate [http://www.networkmultimedia.org NMM - Network Multimedia-Middleware]. As NMM becomes (one of) the new KDE 4 multimedia backends (see this [http://www.linuxtag.org/2006/de/besucher/programm/freies-vortragsprogramm/samstag.html?talkid=319 presentation at the Linuxtag2006]) this would be initial work to support KDEs new multimedia framework Phonon.(nmm provides already sarge package)

  • Package and integrate of [http://www.nomachine.com NX] and [http://freenx.berlios.de FreeNX]. See also [http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/pkg-nx-group/2006-April/000135.html this mail].

  • Help implement ["CDDT"] -- Custom Debian Distributions Toolkit. The toolkit is partially functional, but there are a lot of things to do, for the current status look at the following [http://lists.debian.org/debian-custom/2006/02/msg00074.html message].

  • Develop a new, robust (i.e. not shell script based), security checking tool based on the experience derived from [http://packages.debian.org/checksecurity Checksecurity] and [http://packages.debian.org/tiger Tiger] implementing common host-level security checks, providing better alert mechanisms, and, optionally, integrating with OSS information management systems such as [http://www.prelude-ids.org/ Prelude] (through [http://packages.debian.org/libprelude2 libprelude] and [http://www.ossim.net/ Ossim] (JavierFernandezSanguino)

  • Layered Subversion, [http://laysvn.alioth.debian.org/], which can be very useful to maintain the configuration files of an inhomogenous set of servers, needs to be rewritten for efficiency increases (working on single files is very slow with subversion because of locking, so the rewrite needs to plan ahead and then work on whole layers). Maybe this could be intergrated into svk, too, or even some functionality into upstream subversion itself. (ErichSchubert)

  • Implement netboot in Debian Live (already implemented)
  • Implement a script frontend to Debian Live that creates Live netbooting media, ie. CF/USB Flash, Floppy, CD-ROM (for use in networks where no DHCP server can be used). Such media would contain a kernel, initrd and a hard-coded IP address inside the bootloader's config. file.
  • Implement a GUI frontend for Debian Live
  • TCOS: Thin Client Operating System [http://soleup.eup.uva.es/mediawiki/index.php/TCOS/en TCOS wiki] (need mentor)

Security

  • Help integrate a coherent SELinux security policy into Etch, see ["SELinuxStatus"]
  • Create various variants of the reference policy for specific audiences (server, single user, desktop)
  • Create policy modules for specific packages, or contribute additions back to reference policy
  • SELinux: Automatically select policy modules for installed Debian packages (with dependency handling!), user UI for customizing this list (ErichSchubert)

  • Develop an [http://oval.mitre.org OVAL] agent for Debian. Define a mechanism to automaticaly generate OVAL queries from DSAs so that admins can set a central monitoring network (through an OVAL server and distribute OVAL agents) that can determine which systems need security updates. Optionally rate the urgency of the update using [http://www.first.org/cvss/ CVSS] (by CVE-linking with the [http://nvd.nist.gov/ National Vulnerability Database]) (JavierFernandezSanguino)

  • Develop a lintian-like system (i.e. both local tools and a lintian.debian.org service) to do automatic security review of packages source code and, through a metric, attempt to spot packages with possible security vulnerabilities that need to be reviewed before being released with the testing/stable release (JavierFernandezSanguino)

  • Integrate disk encryption in Debian-Installer. LUKS framework seems to be the way to go (several passwords, changing password allowed, ...)

Infrastructure

  • Develop a central translation coordination system (or enhance existing systems, such as [http://translate.sourceforge.net/ Pootle] or [http://sourceforge.net/projects/wordforge Wordforge] that would be used by translation teams to manage (coordinate), commit and review statistics for all the different l10n components in Debian, from program message translations to package description translations including the website, documentation, debconf notes, etc. For more information on the current state of affairs read [http://people.debian.org/~jfs/debconf6/html/ Internationalisation and localisation in Debian] (JavierFernandezSanguino)

  • Implement a highly reliable, BGP-based load-balancing DNS system for accessing Debian mirrors (cf [http://www.supersparrow.org/ Super Sparrow]). Requires ability to provide assurance that code is extremely robust (through careful testing and thorough testing), and ability to work with ISP and mirror admins (AnthonyTowns, ?JamesTroup, RyanMurray)

  • Expand the BitTorrent protocol/application to work effectively with large, constantly updating collections of files such as the Debian archive. Requires a good understanding of P2P protocol design, significant reimplementation of the BitTorrent code, and an ability to think through new protocols. (AnthonyTowns)

  • Create a DistributedAdminTool, as a webmin replacement, usable for whole networks and domains.

Porting

Misc/unsorted

Mentors for other projects

Check the mails in -private on how to register to be a mentor, to speed things up also email baruch at baruch@debian.org to notify me of your request so I can accept it.

  • AigarsMahinovs - I am a DD and was a participant in SOC 2005, I can mentor students willing to do Debian projects

  • aba (Andi Barth) - projects related to release management, QA, project management
  • Martin Michlmayr (tbm) - projects related to QA, release and project management; possibly also projects related to embedded systems.
  • DirkEddelbuettel - would be glad to mentor and help on R / CRAN related integration

  • StefanoZacchiroli - automated handling of OCaml dependencies (dh_ocaml)

  • DavidMorenoGarza - willing to work on the projects I'm offering to mentor even if they don't get into SOC; if so, please contact me.

  • SergioTalensOliag - will be happy to mentor anyone interested in working on the ["CDDT"].

  • JavierFernandezSanguino - willing to mentor security enhancement or security audit related projects.

  • AndreasSchuldei - would help with FriendsOfDebian and/or the DistributedAdminTool