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This is a draft, and need a lot of work before it leave the draft state.

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].

[http://google-code-updates.blogspot.com/2006/04/summer-of-code-2006.html Request for mentoring organizations] has gone out, and Debian need to move
quickly to make it before the May 1st deadline.
Mentoring organisations should read the [http://code.google.com/soc/mentorfaq.html mentor FAQ].

== TODO ==

 * Formulate projects
 * Organise mentors
 * Bring this content once it's not a draft anymore into www.debian.org?

== Contact info ==

To be decided. Currently the Admin is Baruch Even, Anthony Towns will be an admin as well once he signs up, he can then distribute admin rights as needed.

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.

== Possible Projects (in () possible mentors) ==
(also see [http://www.debian.org/devel/todo/ the general TODO list] and the EtchTODOList)

=== General ===
 * 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].'' (pere)
 * Finish the CollaborativeMaintenance project (RaphaelHertzog)
 * Make Debian more suitable for embedded systems, e.g. by removing Perl from the base system

=== QA related ===
 * 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. (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

=== Release/Testing transition related ===
 * Improve '''Britney''' (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 ===
 * Improve '''DebTags''': ''central database rewrite, review functionality, tag adoption and such'' (ErichSchubert?)
 * '''DebTags''': AI tagger (bayesian etc.) (ErichSchubert?)
 * Unify '''apt, dpkg''', etc (aba)
 * Introduce real '''perl shlibs''' (aba)
 * Improve '''shlibs''': ''to caclulate the used shlibs, rather than the theorically required ones'' (aba)
 * Build [http://www.r-project.org R] / [http://cran.r-project.org CRAN] package generator system for [http://cran.r-project.org CRAN] to extend the current approx. 50 packages to the full 800 or so. All of these packages actually build automagically thanks to existing '''cdbs''' rules. We need a simple stateful system to keep track of what has been added to [http://cran.r-project.org CRAN], what has been updated etc pp. There is a somewhat dormant [http://alioth.debian.org/projects/pkg-bioc/ Alioth Project] with some info. R knowledge helpful, Perl/Python/Ruby/... to implement. (DirkEddelbuettel)
 * [[Anchor(dh_ocaml)]] Automate computation of [http://caml.inria.fr OCaml] library dependencies (re-)writing `dh_ocaml`. See: [http://lists.debian.org/debian-ocaml-maint/2005/04/msg00046.html idea description], [http://bugs.debian.org/328422 proof of concept implementation (#328422)]
 * Make RubyGems work nicely together with the Debian packaging system and Debian Ruby modules. (DavidMorenoGarza)

=== Individual packages ===
 * 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 report''
 * 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''
  * (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)
 * 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.
 * 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)

=== 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
 * 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)

=== Infraestructure ===
 * 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)

=== 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.
= Google Summer of Code 2006 - Debian's involvement =

This wiki page was created to make it easier to plan and coordinate
Debian's involvement in the
[[http://code.google.com/soc/|Google Summer of Code 2006]].
It has now been re-purposed as a reference showing how our assigned projects went.

<<TableOfContents>>

= Projects =

== Debian Live Improvements ==

 * '''Student:''' Robert Pickel
 * '''Mentor:''' Daniel Baumann
 * '''VCS:''' svn://live.debian.net/casper-ng
 * '''Mailing list:''' [[https://lists.debian.org/debian-live/|debian-live]]
 * '''IRC:''' OFTC/#debian-live
 * '''Original idea:''' Automation of Debian Based live-cd creation process
 * '''Final mentor summary:'''

Mentored project about adding rewriting parts of the initramfs
generator (aka casper) did not work out. It was canceled before the
mid-term evaluation, because the student did disappear after two weeks
without doing anything and not responding to pings.

== Debtags AI ==

 * '''Student:''' Alex de Landgraaf
 * '''Mentor:''' Erich Schubert
 * '''VCS:''' svn://alextreme.org/svn-debtags
 * '''Mailing list:''' [[http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/debtags-devel|debtags-devel]]
 * '''IRC:''' OFTC/#debian-devel
 * '''Original idea:''' Debtags, using AI classifiers for automating the tagging of Debian packages
 * '''Final mentor summary:'''

We evaluated the use of a Bayesian AI for assisting during the tagging
of packages. This is harder than spam classification because it's not a
boolean decision spam/ham, but one for each tag.

Key results:
 * does help during tagging, however the results need manual review
 * thus, UI is a key issue
 * works okay for common tags (e.g. suite::kde)
 * does not work well for rare tags (e.g. culture::uzbek)
 * could benefit from improved training algorithms
 * speed is an issue (full training needed several days in first implementation, we were able to cut this down to a few hours. Query is much faster; O(tags)-fold effort of a spam filter)
 * will maybe be included in the Debtags web interface sometime (currently we're using the xapian search engine for suggesting tags instead; this works surprisingly well)
 * getting additional text content for classification is important. Package descriptions are very short, so it might be good to be able to use e.g. the package homepage or files from /usr/share/doc/package for training to have additional text content to process
 * using the package contents (i.e. 'dpkg -L package' / Contents.gz) added some interesting additional data when tokenized smartly (e.g. containing the /usr/games directory is a good indicator of a game application package; /usr/share/games indicated game data or game application packages etc.)

== DWTT (aka wotomae) and CRMI ==

 * '''Student:''' Arnaud Fontaine
 * '''Mentor:''' Raphaël Hertzog
 * '''VCS:''' bzr://bzr.debian.org/bzr/wotomae/mainline/
 * '''IRC:''' OFTC/#debian-devel
 * '''WWW:''' [[https://alioth.debian.org/projects/wotomae/|Alioth]] [[http://blogs.hurdfr.org/arnau/?cat=31|Blog]]
 * '''Original idea:''' Distribution wide-tracker tools (DWTT) and collaborative repository of meta-informations about source packages (CRMI)
 * '''Final mentor summary:'''

Arnaud Fontaine worked on implementing a Distribution-Wide Tracker Tool
(http://wiki.debian.org/DWTT). The goal was to implement a web interface
that could be used to coordinate the work on large set of packages.
Intelligent use of the BTS usertags allows to associate bugs to various
trackers.

It got renamed to wotomae (WOrking TOgether MAde Easy) and the result is
usable at http://wotomae.debian.net
It was developed with the TurboGears framework and some work on improving
the packaging of that framework also happened during the summer. The
source code is stored in a bzr branch:
$ bzr get http://bzr.debian.org/bzr/wotomae/mainline/ wotomae

The result is far from being perfect and it has performance issues. It
lacks some people willing to use it for real work and fix whatever
problems they encounter.

== debian-images-generator ==

 * '''Student:''' Carlos Parra Camargo
 * '''Mentor:''' SteveMcIntyre
 * '''VCS:''' [[http://svn.debian.org/wsvn/deb-imgs-gen|svn://svn.debian.org/deb-imgs-gen]]
 * '''Mailing list:''' [[http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/deb-imgs-gen-devel|deb-imgs-gen-devel]]
 * '''IRC:''' OFTC/#debian-cd
 * '''WWW:''' [[http://alioth.debian.org/projects/deb-imgs-gen/|Alioth]]
 * '''Original idea:''' Rewrite debian-cd, making improvements
 * '''Final mentor summary:'''

Carlos got a lot done, writing most of a new implementation of
debian-cd in python with some added improvements along the way:

 * easier configuration
 * better diagnostic output
 * much cleaner code written in one language

He got to the stage of making working binary CDs with his new tool,
that were comparable with the state of the art in the equivalent
debian-cd version at the time that he started. As there had been some
parallel development happening in debian-cd and we were expecting to
be close to releasing Etch (!), we decided to not press ahead
''immediately'' with pushing Carlos' new code into production. The
plan was (and mostly still is) to start switching over to his newer
cleaner code after the Etch release, with some overlap and comparison
of the output of the two versions before then.

Well-done project overall, and Carlos expressed a desire to stay
involved and continue development. Things have gone a little quiet
since last summer, so I'm going to get in contact again soon.

== Translation Coordination System ==

 * '''Student:''' Gintautas Miliauskas
 * '''Mentor:''' Aigars Mahinovs
 * '''VCS:''' [[http://translate.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/translate/src/trunk/|http://translate.svn.sourceforge.net/]]
 * '''Mailing list:''' debian-i18n@lists.debian.org
 * '''IRC:''' freenode/#pootle
 * '''WWW:''' http://gintasm.blogspot.com/
 * '''Original idea:''' Tools to help in translation work
 * '''Final mentor summary:'''

The outcome of the project was mostly in the way of exploring a specific technical possibility in cooperation between Debian i18n and Pootle developers that was implemented in the Pootle codebase.

The outcome of the project was not a working service, but rather some measures and ideas that have further progressed and should eventually help make a unified translation portal for Debian packages.

== Debian Installer on GNU/Hurd ==

 * '''Student:''' Matheus Morais
 * '''Mentor:''' Colin Watson
 * '''VCS:'''
 * '''Mailing list:''' [[http://lists.debian.org/debian-boot/|debian-boot]]
 * '''IRC:''' OFTC/#debian-boot
 * '''WWW:'''
 * '''Original idea:''' Port debian-installer to run natively on GNU/Hurd
 * '''Final mentor summary:'''

The student apparently spent quite a lot of time and effort getting up
to speed on both d-i and Hurd, but made very little real progress in
terms of code. The project was abandoned by the mid-term evaluation.

== Improve the boot system ==

 * '''Student:''' Carlos Villegas
 * '''Mentor:''' Petter Reinholdtsen
 * '''VCS:''' [[http://svn.debian.org/wsvn/initscripts-ng|svn://svn.debian.org/svn/initscripts-ng]]
 * '''Mailing list:''' [[http://alioth.debian.org/projects/initscripts-ng/|initscripts-ng]]
 * '''IRC:''' OFTC/#pkg-sysvinit
 * '''WWW:''' [[http://bootdebian.blogspot.com|blog]][[http://initscripts-ng.alioth.debian.org/soc2006-bootsystem/|webpage]]
 * '''Original idea:''' Improve boot performance
 * '''Final mentor summary:'''

I supervised a project with Carlos Villegas, who worked on the boot
system in debian. He benchmarked the boot system using bootchart, and
tested several hypothesis on what affected boot speed while
documenting the results. Several of his improvments are implemented
in Debian/Etch already, and some of them I plan to integrate after
etch is released. He made a lintian test for the LSB dependency
headers in init.d scripts, which is slowly making sure all boot
scripts in Debian get dependency information, thus making it possible
to verify and correct the boot script order.

== BTS front-end ==

 * '''Student:''' Philipp Kern
 * '''Mentor:''' Don Armstrong
 * '''VCS:''' [[http://svn.debian.org/wsvn/soc/reportbug-gnome2/trunk/?rev=0&sc=0|svn://svn.debian.org/soc/reportbug-gnome2]] [[http://svn.debian.org/wsvn/soc/bts-frontend/branches/first-steps/?rev=0&sc=0|svn://svn.debian.org/soc/bts-frontend]]
 * '''IRC:''' OFTC/#debian-devel
 * '''WWW:''' [[http://blog.philkern.de/categories/14-Summer-of-Code|blog]]
 * '''Original idea:''' This project is divided into two sub projects: One to provide a Gtk2 front-end to the well known Debian reportbug tool, the other being the BTS GUI front-end with the ability to sync the bugs watched onto the own computer, based on specified search criteria.
 * '''Final mentor summary:'''

''To follow''

== Britney improvements ==

 * '''Student:''' Fabio Tranchitella
 * '''Mentor:''' Andreas Barth
 * '''VCS:''' [[http://svn.debian.org/wsvn/soc/britney/trunk/?rev=0&sc=0|svn://svn.debian.org/soc/britney]]
 * '''Original idea:''' Improve Britney, the scripts used to update Debian's testing distribution
 * '''Final mentor summary:'''

''To follow''

== BitTorrent Extensions ==

 * '''Student:''' Matthew Wronka
 * '''Mentor:''' Anthony Towns
 * '''VCS:'''
 * '''Mailing list:'''
 * '''IRC:'''
 * '''WWW:'''
 * '''Original idea:''' Expand the BitTorrent protocol/application to work effectively with large, constantly updating collections of files such as the Debian archive
 * '''Final mentor summary:'''

Little progress shown, project dropped by the mid-term evaluation.

= 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
 * July 5th: Mid-programme student evaluations due from mentors
 * August 21st: Student projects due
 * September 5th: Final mentor and student evaluations due

= Contact info =

Debian SoC coordinator: Baruch Even baruch@debian.org

Students who have any issue with their mentor or a mentor who has an issue with their student should contact the coordinator to help resolve it.

 * A project was opened for the SoC on Alioth at http://alioth.debian.org/projects/soc/
 * Coordination is done on the mailing list [[http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/soc-coordination/|soc-coordination]]

= Infrastructure Provided to Students =

Students are required to keep their development in the open, it is recommended that you use Alioth for your source control repository, you can use the [[http://alioth.debian.org/projects/soc/|soc project]] for your repository.

Most Debian development happens in the open already, so you will find a wealth of information on mailing lists and IRC, your mentor should be able to direct you to the proper resources.

Google Summer of Code 2006 - Debian's involvement

This wiki page was created to make it easier to plan and coordinate Debian's involvement in the Google Summer of Code 2006. It has now been re-purposed as a reference showing how our assigned projects went.

Projects

Debian Live Improvements

  • Student: Robert Pickel

  • Mentor: Daniel Baumann

  • VCS: svn://live.debian.net/casper-ng

  • Mailing list: debian-live

  • IRC: OFTC/#debian-live

  • Original idea: Automation of Debian Based live-cd creation process

  • Final mentor summary:

Mentored project about adding rewriting parts of the initramfs generator (aka casper) did not work out. It was canceled before the mid-term evaluation, because the student did disappear after two weeks without doing anything and not responding to pings.

Debtags AI

  • Student: Alex de Landgraaf

  • Mentor: Erich Schubert

  • VCS: svn://alextreme.org/svn-debtags

  • Mailing list: debtags-devel

  • IRC: OFTC/#debian-devel

  • Original idea: Debtags, using AI classifiers for automating the tagging of Debian packages

  • Final mentor summary:

We evaluated the use of a Bayesian AI for assisting during the tagging of packages. This is harder than spam classification because it's not a boolean decision spam/ham, but one for each tag.

Key results:

  • does help during tagging, however the results need manual review
  • thus, UI is a key issue
  • works okay for common tags (e.g. suite::kde)
  • does not work well for rare tags (e.g. culture::uzbek)
  • could benefit from improved training algorithms
  • speed is an issue (full training needed several days in first implementation, we were able to cut this down to a few hours. Query is much faster; O(tags)-fold effort of a spam filter)
  • will maybe be included in the Debtags web interface sometime (currently we're using the xapian search engine for suggesting tags instead; this works surprisingly well)
  • getting additional text content for classification is important. Package descriptions are very short, so it might be good to be able to use e.g. the package homepage or files from /usr/share/doc/package for training to have additional text content to process
  • using the package contents (i.e. 'dpkg -L package' / Contents.gz) added some interesting additional data when tokenized smartly (e.g. containing the /usr/games directory is a good indicator of a game application package; /usr/share/games indicated game data or game application packages etc.)

DWTT (aka wotomae) and CRMI

  • Student: Arnaud Fontaine

  • Mentor: Raphaël Hertzog

  • VCS: bzr://bzr.debian.org/bzr/wotomae/mainline/

  • IRC: OFTC/#debian-devel

  • WWW: Alioth Blog

  • Original idea: Distribution wide-tracker tools (DWTT) and collaborative repository of meta-informations about source packages (CRMI)

  • Final mentor summary:

Arnaud Fontaine worked on implementing a Distribution-Wide Tracker Tool (http://wiki.debian.org/DWTT). The goal was to implement a web interface that could be used to coordinate the work on large set of packages. Intelligent use of the BTS usertags allows to associate bugs to various trackers.

It got renamed to wotomae (WOrking TOgether MAde Easy) and the result is usable at http://wotomae.debian.net It was developed with the ?TurboGears framework and some work on improving the packaging of that framework also happened during the summer. The source code is stored in a bzr branch: $ bzr get http://bzr.debian.org/bzr/wotomae/mainline/ wotomae

The result is far from being perfect and it has performance issues. It lacks some people willing to use it for real work and fix whatever problems they encounter.

debian-images-generator

Carlos got a lot done, writing most of a new implementation of debian-cd in python with some added improvements along the way:

  • easier configuration
  • better diagnostic output
  • much cleaner code written in one language

He got to the stage of making working binary CDs with his new tool, that were comparable with the state of the art in the equivalent debian-cd version at the time that he started. As there had been some parallel development happening in debian-cd and we were expecting to be close to releasing Etch (!), we decided to not press ahead immediately with pushing Carlos' new code into production. The plan was (and mostly still is) to start switching over to his newer cleaner code after the Etch release, with some overlap and comparison of the output of the two versions before then.

Well-done project overall, and Carlos expressed a desire to stay involved and continue development. Things have gone a little quiet since last summer, so I'm going to get in contact again soon.

Translation Coordination System

The outcome of the project was mostly in the way of exploring a specific technical possibility in cooperation between Debian i18n and Pootle developers that was implemented in the Pootle codebase.

The outcome of the project was not a working service, but rather some measures and ideas that have further progressed and should eventually help make a unified translation portal for Debian packages.

Debian Installer on GNU/Hurd

  • Student: Matheus Morais

  • Mentor: Colin Watson

  • VCS:

  • Mailing list: debian-boot

  • IRC: OFTC/#debian-boot

  • WWW:

  • Original idea: Port debian-installer to run natively on GNU/Hurd

  • Final mentor summary:

The student apparently spent quite a lot of time and effort getting up to speed on both d-i and Hurd, but made very little real progress in terms of code. The project was abandoned by the mid-term evaluation.

Improve the boot system

I supervised a project with Carlos Villegas, who worked on the boot system in debian. He benchmarked the boot system using bootchart, and tested several hypothesis on what affected boot speed while documenting the results. Several of his improvments are implemented in Debian/Etch already, and some of them I plan to integrate after etch is released. He made a lintian test for the LSB dependency headers in init.d scripts, which is slowly making sure all boot scripts in Debian get dependency information, thus making it possible to verify and correct the boot script order.

BTS front-end

  • Student: Philipp Kern

  • Mentor: Don Armstrong

  • VCS: svn://svn.debian.org/soc/reportbug-gnome2 svn://svn.debian.org/soc/bts-frontend

  • IRC: OFTC/#debian-devel

  • WWW: blog

  • Original idea: This project is divided into two sub projects: One to provide a Gtk2 front-end to the well known Debian reportbug tool, the other being the BTS GUI front-end with the ability to sync the bugs watched onto the own computer, based on specified search criteria.

  • Final mentor summary:

To follow

Britney improvements

  • Student: Fabio Tranchitella

  • Mentor: Andreas Barth

  • VCS: svn://svn.debian.org/soc/britney

  • Original idea: Improve Britney, the scripts used to update Debian's testing distribution

  • Final mentor summary:

To follow

BitTorrent Extensions

  • Student: Matthew Wronka

  • Mentor: Anthony Towns

  • VCS:

  • Mailing list:

  • IRC:

  • WWW:

  • Original idea: Expand the BitTorrent protocol/application to work effectively with large, constantly updating collections of files such as the Debian archive

  • Final mentor summary:

Little progress shown, project dropped by the mid-term evaluation.

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
  • July 5th: Mid-programme student evaluations due from mentors
  • August 21st: Student projects due
  • September 5th: Final mentor and student evaluations due

Contact info

Debian SoC coordinator: Baruch Even baruch@debian.org

Students who have any issue with their mentor or a mentor who has an issue with their student should contact the coordinator to help resolve it.

Infrastructure Provided to Students

Students are required to keep their development in the open, it is recommended that you use Alioth for your source control repository, you can use the soc project for your repository.

Most Debian development happens in the open already, so you will find a wealth of information on mailing lists and IRC, your mentor should be able to direct you to the proper resources.