Application for Google SoC with Debian
Name
Sam Dunne
Contact/Email:
Private email sam.dunne101@gmail.com
College email 10308947@ucdconnect.ie
On irc.debian.org my nick is SCD[Eire]
Mobile number can be supplied on request.
Background:
- I am currently studying Computer Science Bsc in University College Dublin in Ireland. I am in my first year and so far have enjoyed the course overally. However, by far my favorite part of my course is Programming. We were started on C this year and I took to it straight away. I spend a lot of my time studying and coding C for college (and little of my time studying math). I've been using linux, namely Ubuntu, for about 6 years now and love everything about it. For awhile now I've been interested in working on linux distributions but haven't had the time or the skills required to do so. So naturally when I was searching through the GsoC list and saw Debian I immediatly jumped at it. I spoke with Steve Langasek (vorlon) over IRC about working with the “dpkg declaration diversions” idea for my SoC. He was extremely helpful and directed me towards where to grab the code and what files I should look at. Even though the code is larger than anything I have previously worked with I understood what it all did (even if I did check my notes occasionally). Over the past week I have been reading the documentation for dpkg, especially about diversions. I feel at this stage I have a fairly good grasp on how the code operates and am currently just familiarising myself with the source code. I've been looking at bug reports on the current code so I can learn how to properly edit the code and conform to the code style guidelines.
Project title Synopsis:
APT/dpkg: 'declarative diversions' will implement support for declarative diversions in dpkg, to obsolete manual calls to dpkg-divert in maintainer scripts.
Benefits to Debian Deliverables:
The implementation of this project will ensure that dpkg isn't replying on the maintainers scripts when it comes to redirecting and replacing files. This will benefit Debian in two ways. It will ensure that all code is diverted in the same manner. It will mean that maintainers can focus more on the package code rather than attempting to implement diversions.
Project details:
The point on this project is to ensure to automated handling of file redirects when installing packages. This ensures that all redirects are implemented in the corrent manner and that maintainers aren't being replyed on to properly implement the code.
Project schedule:
I am currently laying to ground work to take on this project. I have spent the last two weeks talking to people on IRC and reading the documentation on dpkg. I will continue to familiarise myself with the code and possibly try and solve some bugs until the 3rd of May (Start of college exams). I am finished college for my summer holidays on the 16th of May 2011. On the Google SoC website it states that coding begins on the 23rd of May. I would use the period between these two dates to go over my plan for how I am going to achieve the goal of the project to ensure I haven't missed anything important. I hope to have more than half of the project completed by the halfway date of the 11th of July. This allows me more time to fix any bugs or mistakes by the end.
Other summer plans:
No other summer plans.
Exams and other commitments:
I have no commitments over the summer period (May-September).
If you are not a Debian Developer:
I will hopefully continue to contribute to Debian on dpkg as much as possible.